Mom says scammers used AI to clone daughter's voice in $1 million kidnapping scheme

AI technology may be taking phone scams to another level, as one mother claims she was targeted in a $1 million scam after being convinced her daughter was kidnapped.

Jennifer DeStefano claims that scammers used AI technology to imitate her daughter's voice in a bid to scam her out of a $1 million ransom.

Recounting the horrifying incident, the Arizona-based mom said: "I never doubted for one second it was her.

"That’s the freaky part that really got me to my core."

Jennifer DeStefano/Facebook

DeStefano's 15-year-old daughter, Brie, was on a ski trip at the time she received the scam call.

"I pick up the phone, and I hear my daughter’s voice, and it says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing.

"I said, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and crying."

The terrified mum then said she heard a man's voice telling 'Brie' to put him on the phone.

DeStefano recounted: "This man gets on the phone, and he’s like, ‘Listen here. I’ve got your daughter'.

"'You call the police, you call anybody, I’m going to pop her so full of drugs. I’m going to have my way with her, and I’m going to drop her off in Mexico'."

In the background, DeStefano could hear her daughter crying and pleading for help.

The 'kidnapper' then demanded he receive $1 million in ransom, dropping it to $50,000 when the distraught mum said she didn't have the money.

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Thankfully, DeStefano managed to confirm that her daughter her daughter's whereabouts after calling the police and managing to confirm that Brie was safe on her skiing trip.

The Scottsdale mom said: "It was completely her voice.

"It was her inflection. It was the way she would have cried."

It turns out that her daughter's voice was recreated via an AI simulation, which was able to replicate Brie's voice from brief soundbites.

Explaining the technology, Subbarao Kambhampati, a computer science professor and AI authority at Arizona State University, said: "Now there are ways in which you can do this with just three seconds of your voice. Three seconds. And with the three seconds, it can come close to how exactly you sound."

This is especially distressing for DeStefano as Brie hasn't put her voice out on her any of her social media accounts.

DeStefano said: "She has a few public interviews for sports/school that have a large sampling of her voice.

"However, this is something to be extra concerned with kids who do have public accounts.”

Dan Mayo, an assistant special agent at the FBI's Phoenix office, said: "If you have it [your info] public, you’re allowing yourself to be scammed by people like this.

"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."

To root out scammers, Mayo advised that family members ask questions about their loved ones that the scammer wouldn't know.