Man says he offered to snatch children for Aussie TV show

Col Chapman, who describes himself as a child recovery specialist, said executives at the Nine Network's "60 Minutes" program told him to "sharpen his pencil" when he quoted them 150,000 Australian dollars ($114,000) late last year to get the children, Lahala, 6, and Noah, 4, out of Lebanon.

The children's Australian mother, Sally Faulkner, a four-member crew from Nine, two British agents from the Britain-based Child Abduction Recovery International company, known as CARI, and two Lebanese men are in police custody in Beirut over a bungled attempt last week to smuggle the children out of the country.

The crew were recording from a car window on April 6 as the two CARI agents grabbed the children from their grandmother and a domestic servant at a South Beirut bus stop.