How To Deliver A Ransom: Learn the secrets behind the Kidnap for Ransom business by Rob Phayre

From the Blurb

Ever wanted to learn about the kidnap for ransom business?
This book is for the families of those who have just been kidnapped,
It’s for professional security managers,
And it’s for those with a fascination of true crime, who want to learn.
Understand the risks so you can avoid getting kidnapped in the first place.
Learn about what to do if it has just happened to your loved one or colleague. This book includes guidance provided through extensive checklists on what to do, and what not to do, when responding to live kidnap for ransom cases.
Take a look in detail at how kidnap for ransom works as a business, so you can understand how to beat kidnappers at their own game.
Explore the topic from abduction through to recovery from both the criminal and the good guys perspectives.
This illustrated book is packed with case studies, anecdotes, scenarios and dilemmas.


Rob Phayre and his team specialised in the delivery of ransom, for the release of hostages for humanitarian purposes.

Over a three-year period they:
Rescued over 800 hostages.
Recovered more than 2 billion dollars’ worth of shipping assets and cargos.
Delivered more than a hundred million US dollars in cash as ransom.
Some of those individual ransoms broke the world records for the largest ransoms ever paid at sea.

Those records still stand today…

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Book review

What this book is, and what it isn’t.

How To Deliver A Ransom is informal in nature, but highly informative. It asks, and answers, a wide variety of questions based on real life kidnap for ransom incidents. 

What it is.

This is a book that will help you understand the whole kidnap for ransom business. Its primary purpose is to support successful outcomes for hostages, their families and the team that delivers the ransom. For that reason, it is packed with checklists and considerations to help a family respond to a kidnap incident. 

In the chapters below we will discuss the risks, along with the tricks and techniques that are used to manage them.

At times it’s quite technical in nature and factual, but it’s backed up by real life case studies, anecdotes and dilemmas.

This book regularly switches between Red Team and Blue Team perspectives where the Blue Team are considered friendly and the Red are the criminals. It is important to know your enemy after-all and you will learn to think like a criminal! Then, you can use that insight to understand how to manage your risks when responding to an incident.

You will learn about ransoms in detail. What makes a good one, from both the delivery team and the kidnappers’ perspective? What are the pitfalls of the different mediums through which ransoms are paid? How do you deliver a ransom safely, either on land or by sea? What are the dilemmas that you must consider during a kidnapping response? Ultimately, how do you get the hostage(s) home safely?

At the end of the book you will learn about what you can do to minimise your risks if you are a traveller to, or are living in, high-risk countries. You will also learn how to survive the crime, if, should everything else fail, you end up becoming a hostage. 

A lot of people have learned some of those lessons the hard way. You won’t have to.

What this book isn’t.

This book doesn’t discuss cybercrimes and cyber-ransoms. It’s much more visceral than that and grounded in the physical kidnap for ransom world.

This isn’t a security manager’s handbook, and it doesn’t have templates or plans. Nor is it a book for the family of a victim to use, to solve the problem on their own. It is only a guide, and you will need professional help as well.

If you are managing an initial response, either as a family member or a security professional, I am sorry that you are going through that. If you go to howtodeliveraransom.com there are some free and paid resources available, and you can get links to more support.

Can the criminals learn from this book?

This is certainly not a handbook for kidnappers. I suspect you will gather through the rest of the book what I think about that breed of pondlife. I am not very subtle about it. For that reason, there are complete sections of a kidnap response that I avoid discussing entirely.

Finally, this book doesn’t reveal any secrets or break any non-disclosure agreements. The many anecdotes that are included in this book are suitably changed to protect the identities of the individuals, companies, or governments that they are (not) about.