CHANDLER, Ariz. — "She's crying and she's saying 'they got me, they got me,'" Jennifer said, remembering the phone call she got Sunday morning.
Jennifer, who doesn't want to use her last name, said she heard her daughter's voice on the other end of the phone, crying. Then a man's voice said her daughter, Gabi, had been kidnapped.
"I felt like I just went into a tunnel," Jennifer said, "and everything just disappeared."
Jennifer said she threw the phone to her husband and ran to her car. She got in and drove the short distance to the store where Gabi worked.
"Two minutes later, she comes in through the door and she's hysterical— shaking, crying," Gabi said.
Gabi was, of course, just fine, and not kidnapped.
It was a scam. Eventually, the scammer hung up when Jennifer's husband started asking more questions and asking to speak with his daughter.
Jennifer suspects it was an AI ransom scam. Using just a few seconds of audio, you can clone a person's voice to make them say whatever you want them to, complete with emotion and proper inflection.
Jennifer said her husband called Chandler police but was told there was nothing they could do. A police spokesperson confirmed as much to 12News, saying the scammers use burner phones and spoofed numbers. They could be anywhere in the country.
However, the spokesperson said, they take every call seriously and work fast to make sure the kidnapping is fake.
Experts said the best thing to do is have a safe word for your family that you never tell anyone. That way, you can verify that the person you're talking to on the phone really is your loved one, and not an AI clone.
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