New England Parents Beware: Scary Scam Clones Kids’ Voices to Demand Ransom
Parents on Alert After Scary Scam Clones Kids’ Voices to Demand Ransom
OK, add this to the things we parents need to worry about:
There’s a scary new scam freaking out mothers and fathers everywhere. Apparently, scammers are can use artificial intelligence to CLONE kids voices and pretend the kids have been kidnapped.
Arizona mom Jennifer DeStefano got a call from an unknown number.
She answered.
Then she heard her 15-year-old daughter sobbing.
According to AZfamily.com:
“The phone number that appeared on the screen was unfamiliar. Jennifer DeStefano almost let it go to voicemail, but her 15-year-old was out of town skiing. Maybe there had been an accident. “I pick up the phone, and I hear my daughter’s voice, and it says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing,” DeStefano recalled. “I said, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and crying.”
Then Jennifer heard a man say he’d take her to Mexico if he didn’t get $1 million.
When she said she didn’t have that much, he lowered the price to $50,000.
Huh?
Who knew haggling was OK during ransom talks?
Anyway….
Jennifer was at her other daughter’s dance class when it happened, and other parents listening were shocked and fell for it, too.
Someone called 911. Another parent called Jennifer’s husband.
Jennifer never doubted it was her daughter, she told AZfamily.com:
“It was never a question of who is this? It was completely her voice. It was her inflection. It was the way she would have cried,” she said. “I never doubted for one second it was her. That’s the freaky part that really got me to my core.”
Thankfully, Jennifer’s husband was able to confirm their daughter was safe.
She was upstairs in her bedroom.
But it was four minutes of terror, Jennifer said.
Scary Scam Clones Kids’ Voices
Apparently, cloning kids’ voices is really easy now. You only need a three or four-second clip of them to do it.
Experts say all you can do is be suspicious about any calls coming from a weird number. And question anyone who’s pressuring you to send money right away.
Jeez. You can’t trust your eyes thanks to deep fakes. Now trust your EARS.
An FBI spokesman said that if it happens to you, report it.
