Imagine answering the phone and hearing desperate pleas for help from someone who sounds just like a loved one, only to later discover it was all part of a terrifying scam. That’s exactly what happened to Deborah Del Mastro, a California mother who experienced this nightmare firsthand.
Del Mastro says she received a call from an unknown number. When she answered, a man’s voice told her that her 37-year-old daughter had been kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and demanded $20,000 for her release. Moments later, Del Mastro heard her daughter’s voice pleading for help.
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“It sounded just like her,” Del Mastro said.
But it wasn’t her daughter. Instead, scammers had used artificial intelligence to mimic her daughter’s voice, a tactic known as an AI ‘voice cloning’ scam.
According to the FBI, Americans lost more than $893 million to AI-related scams last year. These hoaxes are becoming easier for scammers to pull off as technology advances. Fraudsters can use AI to steal and clone voices, making them nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
“My daughter’s voice said back to me, ‘I’m so sorry, Mom. I love you,’” Del Mastro recalled.
In a panic, Del Mastro says she wired the scammers around $5,000 because that’s all she could get at that moment and said it could have been worse. But that’s money she says she can’t get back.
“As a parent, when you truly believe that your child, adult child, is in distress and terror distress, you’ll do anything. You’ll do anything,” she said.
That sense of desperation and panic is exactly what scammers count on, experts say. When fear takes over, it can cloud judgment. That’s why experts recommend taking a moment to look for red flags. Try to contact your loved one through other means, such as sending a text message or calling from another phone.
Experts also suggest that families establish “code words” to help verify each other’s identities in situations like this.