An Arizona mom faced every parent’s worst nightmare after she received a call claiming her teenage daughter had been kidnapped and there was a $1 million ransom for her safe return. However, it wasn’t true. Jennifer DeStefano says scammers used AI to clone 15-year-old Briana DeStefano’s voice while she was away on a ski trip and attempted to extort the cash from the girl’s mother as part of an elaborate scam.
“I never doubted for one second it was her. That’s the freaky part that really got mom to my core,” Jennifer told WKYT.
The scam attempt is part of a rise in “caller-ID spoofing” schemes that are gaining traction around the country. They involve scammers claiming to have kidnapped and taken a person’s relative hostage and demanding money if they want them back.
Jennifer DeStefano answered the phone that day just to make sure everything was okay with Brie while she was away. However, that decision changed things in ways she never could have imagined.
AI scammers are taking advantage of technology in horrifying ways
“I pick up the phone, and I hear my daughter’s voice, and it says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing,” Jennifer recalled. “I said, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and crying.”
She went on to say she then heard a “man’s voice” tell her daughter to “lie down” and put her “head back.” That “man” then came on the phone and claimed that he had Briana and demanded money if Jennifer wanted her daughter home safely.
“You call the police, you call anybody, I’m going to pop her so full of drugs,” the voice said. “I’m going to have my way with her, and I’m going to drop her off in Mexico.” While he was saying this, her daughter’s voice was in the background screaming for her mother’s help.
After demanding $1 million, the scammer lowered his ransom fee to $50,000 when Jennifer said she didn’t have the money. However, she thankfully never handed over a single bit of cash. Instead, she called 911 and her husband, both of whom confirmed Briana DeStefano was just fine and having a great time on her ski trip.
Still, Jennifer DeStefano wasn’t totally convinced given how much the voice on the phone sounded like her daughter. “It was completely her voice. It was her inflection, the way she would have cried,” she insisted.
Experts say that technology has become so advanced that these days, AI can mimic a person’s tone and inflection with just the tiniest soundbite of their voice. Three seconds is all that’s needed to do this, and scammers are taking advantage of it.
However, Jennifer was shocked at how this could have happened since none of her daughter’s social media accounts are public. However, she did do a few school interviews in which her voice could be heard, which is incredibly concerning.
“If you have it [your info] public, you’re allowing yourself to be scammed by people like this,” said Dan Mayo, the assistant special agent at FBI’s Phoenix office. “They’re going to be looking for public profiles that have as much information as possible on you, and when they get ahold of that, they’re going to dig into you.”
