The phone number on the screen was unrecognizable and Jennifer DeStefano almost left it on answering machine while her 15-year-old daughter was out of town skiing. There may have been an accident.
“I pick up the phone and hear my daughter saying, ‘Mama!’ She sobs,” recalls DeStefano.
Watch the video above: Jennifer relives a complicated scam in Sunrise.
Watch the latest news and streaming for free on 7plus >>
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she was sobbing and crying, saying, ‘Mommy, I messed up.'”
In a split second, DeStefano’s confusion turned to terror.
“Then I heard a man say, ‘Put your head back.’ I lay down and I’m like, ‘Wait, what’s going on?'” DeStefano said.
“This man answered the phone and said, ‘Listen here. I have your daughter. This is how I get down. You call the police, you call anyone, me. I’m going to fill her up with drugs, I’m going to go with her, and I’m going to drop her off in Mexico.
“And at that moment, I started shaking. In the background, she bellows, ‘Help me, Mama. Help me. Help me.'”
There were no doubts in DeStefano’s mind. Her daughter was in trouble.
“It wasn’t a question of who this was. It was entirely her voice. It was her refraction. It was the way she would have cried,” she said.
“I never for a second suspected it was her. That’s the weird part that really got me to the core.”
But the 15-year-old said nothing about it. The voice on the phone was a clone created by artificial intelligence.
“I can no longer trust my ears,” said Subbarao Kambhampati, a computer science professor at Arizona State University.
According to AI specialists, voice duplication technology is advancing rapidly.
“Originally, we needed more samples. There’s a way to do this with just three seconds of your voice. Three seconds. And in three seconds you can get really close to your sound,” Kanbanpatty said on On. tells Your Side.
“Most voice clones really capture inflections and emotions. The bigger the sample, the better it captures them.
“Obviously, you can’t always replicate what it sounds like when you’re upset if you speak in a normal voice, but if your upset voice lasts for three seconds, all bets are off. will be.”
“It’s a new toy.”
Deep learning techniques are now largely overlooked and are becoming easier to access and use, according to Kanbhampathi.
“It’s a new toy and I think it can be used in some good ways, but certainly in some very interesting ways,” he said.
Scammers using voice cloning technology often find their prey on social media, according to FBI Phoenix Office Assistant Special Agent Dan Mayo.
“You have to keep that stuff locked up,” he said.
“The problem is, if you are public, you allow people like this to fall for you, because they are looking for a public profile that has as much information about you as possible. Once they get it, they’re going to dig you up.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, scammers often require victims to pay ransoms via wire transfers, cryptocurrency transfers, or gift cards.
Once money or gift card numbers are transferred, they are almost impossible to get back.
“Think of a movie. Slow it down. Slow people down. Ask a lot of questions,” Mayo said.
“If they have someone interested in you, you can find out a lot of details about them that this scammer doesn’t know. As soon as you start asking them specific details, you know it’s a scammer.”
There are other red flags.
“If the phone number is from an unfamiliar area code, that’s one of the red flags,” Mayo added.
“Second red flag. International number. Sometimes they call from them too. Third red flag. They won’t let you hang up and talk to someone important. That’s a problem.” .”
The person who supposedly kidnapped DeStefano’s daughter demanded money. He started with $1 million.
“I don’t have a million dollars. Please don’t hurt my daughter,” she pleaded.
“Then he wanted $50,000.”
how the fraud was uncovered
DeStefano kept talking to him. She was in another daughter’s dance studio, surrounded by her mother who was anxious to help her.
One person called the police. Another called DeStefano’s husband. Only four minutes later, his daughter was found safe.
“She was upstairs in her room and was like, ‘What? What’s going on?'” DeStefano said.
“Then I get mad at these guys, obviously. This is not what you play with.”
It’s unclear how many people have received similar scam calls regarding family emergencies and fake kidnappings using voice cloning.
“It’s happening on a daily basis, some reported, some unreported,” Mayo said.
“I think a lot of people are kind of relieved when they realize it was a bogus scam, and maybe they’re glad it didn’t happen to them.
“But there are those who give in to these and end up sending money to these individuals.
“Believe me, the FBI is investigating these people and we are finding them.”
DeStefano hung up. Then a wave of relief swept over her.
“I literally just sat down and cried,” she said.
