Many people have been called on the phone by someone who pretended to have kidnapped a loved one. Others have received calls from people who claimed to be a relative or close friend and had been involved in some kind of accident and needed money.
Thankfully, most of those scammers don’t really know details of the families they are calling and they rely on making the person who receives the call panic and don’t think twice before transferring the money.
In those cases, it is usually easy to not get scammed just by asking names, surnames, or simply asking to talk to the loved one who is supposedly in trouble.
But in this story, the scammers took the whole thing to a new level. It is believed they used voice cloning in order to convince a Pearland father to pay a large amount of money in order to see his daughter again.
“It was terrifying,” the father who was almost scammed told KHOU 11. “He was telling me that I would never see my daughter again and everything. It was terrible.”
A few months ago, John Bridges received a phone call. At first, he heard crying, followed by his daughter Brittany’s voice telling him, “I’ve had an accident, dad, help me!”
But if that wasn’t scary enough, a stranger then got on the line and said, “I’ve got your daughter. She’s in my car.”
The caller then told the worried dad that if he didn’t do as he was told, he would never see his daughter again. He was specifically asked to stay on the phone, get cash, then go to a grocery store.
John was convinced that Brittany was in danger, so he decided to do as he was told in order to make sure his girl would be fine and would return home.
He explained to KHOU 11:
“My mouth is dry and my heart’s beating 100 miles an hour. When he was telling me I would never see my daughter again, it was terrible.”
Luckily, before sending the money to what proved to be scammers, John’s daughter Brittany called her mom. When she found out her parents thought she was in danger, she was shocked.
“I couldn’t believe that, I was just like ‘I’m okay, I’m fine’,” the young woman said.
This Pearland family’s scam story may have had a happy ending, however, experts warn us about the potential threat voice cloning might pose in the future.
Although voice cloning technology can be used for good, like “conversational assistants, smart speakers, dubbing, digital characters, gaming, audiobooks, navigation systems or voice branding”, it can also be used to mislead people or even cause harm.
Scammers can use a person’s voice from social media for example, and turn it into a completely different thing using technology.
It may sound like something taken out of a fantasy movie, but it is 100% real and it’s here. So, we definitely need to be extra careful.
Watch the father talk about his frightening experience in the video below. It’s definitely a scam everyone should be aware of!
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