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WARNING: AI Voice Cloning and Virtual Kidnappings
00:24:14
A call from someone you love in crisis is terrifying enough - but what if the voice begging for help isn’t really them? We break down how AI voice cloning is fueling virtual kidnapping scams, why panic is the weapon scammers count on, and the one conversation your family should have before the phone rings.
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So you're saying with Hilton honors, I can use points for a free night stay anywhere? Anywhere. What about fancy places like the canopy in Paris? Yeah, Hilton Honors, baby. Or relaxing sanctuaries like the Conrad in Tulum? Hilton Honors, baby. Ooh, what about the five star Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives? Are you gonna do this for all 9,000 properties when you want points that can take you anywhere, anytime it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Hi crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And the story I have for you today is one that I want you to listen to every single second of. Because by the time it's over, you're gonna wanna call every person you love and do one simple thing that could save you from one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable. This is about something that's happening right now to real people. And as technology gets more advanced, so so do the criminals looking to exploit it. Lots of people have no idea that this is even possible. And the real unsettling part, how cheap and accessible the tools to do this actually are and how fast they're evolving. This is the story about how hearing the voice of someone you love could be the beginning of a nightmare. And what you can do to fight. Jennifer Destefano is one of those moms who's always on the move. She and her husband have four kids in close age and most weekends that means splitting up just to keep up. So on this particular late Friday afternoon, January 20, 2023, while Jennifer is in Scottsdale, Arizona, swinging by their 13 year old daughter's dance studio to pick her up after a lesson, her husband is about 150 miles north in the mountains with their youngest son and their 15 year old daughter Briana, so she can do some training for ski races. Now Jennifer is getting out of her car in the studio parking lot when her phone rings. It's an unknown number and she almost lets it go to voicemail. But unknown calls can be from hospitals. And with Brianna on a mountain, it's too risky to ignore it. So she picks up, and it is Brianna on the line, but she's crying, barely holding it together, and she tells Jennifer, mom, I messed up. Now, Jennifer doesn't panic. She's thinking that maybe Brianna got hurt skiing. So she's like, you know, it's okay, Bre. Calm down. What's going on? What's wrong? And then she hears a man's voice cut in, telling Briana to lay down and put her head back. And then suddenly, she hears her daughter cry out, mom, these bad men have me. Help me. Help me. And then the man fully takes the phone, and he tells Jennifer that he has her daughter, and if she calls the police or breathes a word of this to anyone, they will never see her again because he is going to drug her, sexually assault her, and leave her for dead in Mexico. She can barely hear what he's saying because all she can focus on is her daughter in the background, yelling and pleading until her voice goes muffled, like she's being pulled away from the phone. Jennifer is shaking as she pushes through the dance studio doors. Now she keeps the man on speakerphone, but mutes herself so he can't hear her, and she screams for help. And other moms gather fast. One rushes outside to call 911, while the rest surround Jennifer and listen as the caller makes threat after horrifying threat. And Jennifer begs to speak to her daughter again, but the man won't put her back on the phone. He's doing all of the talking now, and what he wants in exchange for Brianna's life is staggering $1 million. Jennifer is willing to agree to anything right now, but once she starts questioning how she's supposed to get him all that money, the guy starts doing the math in his head. And he decides on his own that there's no way she's going to be able to come up with that much money, because he wants cash only, and he's not going to give her time to get it together. So he makes this quick decision to give her a discount. He'll take $50,000 instead. And he's adamant. He's not willing to mess with wire transfers or routing numbers. All that stuff is way too traceable. So this is the plan. He says she needs to get the 50 grand together, and then he's going to come pick her up in a white van. She'll get in, he'll put a bag over her head, and then he'll bring her to some undisclosed place to exchange the money for Brianna. And he warns Jennifer she better have every dollar on her when he gets there, otherwise both her and her daughter are dead. Now, this whole time, Jennifer's younger daughter has been just standing there, frozen in fear as she listens to this man threaten to assault and kill her sister and her mother. So another parent actually grabs the girl's phone and tries to contact Jennifer's husband, because he's way more likely to answer from his other daughter's number than one he doesn't recognize. And they need to get in touch with him and find out what's going on. How long has she been gone? Does he even know that she's missing yet? But when she calls, the phone just rings and rings and rings and keeps rolling over to voicemail. As all of this chaos is unfolding, the mom who called 911 comes back inside and begins talking to Jennifer. She says, this has to be fake. The 911 dispatcher had told her that they've gotten more and more of these lately. A recording of a loved one made from AI. They asked you to get some gift cards, Bitcoin or something. But Jennifer pushes back. She's like, that's not what this is. It wasn't a recording. This was a back and forth interactive conversation with her daughter. And on top of that, they wanted to meet to get the money, which is like a whole different ball game, the likes of which the department probably hasn't seen. Still, according to the dispatcher they have on the line, they say, don't trust it. The technology is advanced enough for you to have a conversation with it. It can even replicate emotions in someone's voice. But Jennifer isn't buying it. This wasn't just an emotional voice. It. It was Brianna's emotional voice, right down to the specific, unique way that she cries. Like the distinct quiver in her voice. How could a machine fake that? It seems impossible. So Jennifer is still keeping the guy on the line, trying to stall until police arrive, promising him that she's doing everything she can to pull the money together. Then, in the midst of her panic, someone hands her a different phone. And it's a familiar voice. She hears her husband's. He had been in the shower, which is why he'd missed the barrage of calls over the past few minutes. But he's confused by the urgency because Briana's fine. He's looking at her. She's catching up on homework, not begging for her life. And they are both totally in the dark about everything that's happening back in Scottsdale, where Jennifer is after what she has just been through hearing that Brianna is fine from her husband isn't even enough. Jennifer needs to hear it from Briana. But even her daughter's voice on the line doesn't totally reassure her like she thought it would. She can't trust her own ears right now. She keeps asking her, is it really you? Are you really okay? Over and over again until finally it sinks in. Her daughter is alive and well. And once she is finally convinced, Jennifer turns back to the would be kidnapper on the phone. But she's not fearful anymore. Now she is furious. She tells him that what he's doing is one of the most evil things a person can do. And he tries to double down. He keeps insisting that he has her daughter and threatening to kill them both. But by this point, Jennifer is done. She hangs up before she just collapses on the floor in relief. Now, this whole ordeal lasted about four minutes, but when Jennifer thinks about the damage that it did cause and what it could have caused, it's chilling. And if there had been someone to come get her, police wouldn't have been hot on her trail. Because, by the way, they never showed up. I guess since the dispatcher had already concluded it was a scam, they didn't even bother to send anyone. Which is kind of wild to me because I don't care how many of these calls that they've been hearing about, this one sounds extreme. Like, even if it started as a scam, God only knows where this was headed. Like, what was the end game? Was it all a test? Would someone have shown up for her? I don't know, and neither does Jennifer. But when she followed up with law enforcement later that night, she was basically told no harm, no foul. They said there was no actual crime committed. No one was physically kidnapped or harmed, no money exchanged hands. It was deemed a prank. That is not enough for Jennifer. She stays up all night trying to answer the questions running through her mind. How did they get her daughter's voice? Were they being watched? Had they been targeted? Were they in any danger actually then or still? As she told our reporter Nina, she went through every piece of Briana's digital footprint that she could find. Brianna's Instagram, her TikTok account. But Briana's Instagram and her TikTok accounts are private and she only has a few dozen followers. And while there are a couple of like, athletics related things of her out there, there is nothing that comes close to explaining what Jennifer heard on that call. So still to this day, she hasn't been able to figure out how they did It. But what she does find is a vast community of people who have been through something similar. Because when Jennifer posted a warning about what happened to her on next door, the responses flood in. Some people were nasty and said that Jennifer was just being gullible. But lots came back with their own versions of this same story. This happened to me. This happened to my parents, to my sibling. One of the dance studio moms said that her sister had recently been scammed out of $1,500 by the same type of call. A friend of Jennifer's got a call that sounded exactly like her 8 year old son begging for his life after she had just tucked him into bed. The caller even used his private nickname. And this kid didn't even have a phone or social media or any presence online. So who the hell knows how they managed to replicate his voice? I mean, Jennifer's own mother had gotten a call from someone pretending to be Jennifer's brother, but her mom is hard of hearing, so she kept asking the caller to repeat himself. And eventually she just told him, my son would never talk to me like this. Go find your real mother. And she hung up on him. And her mom didn't even think to mention it until Jennifer's whole ordeal happened. And these weren't just fake kidnappings Jennifer heard about. Fake arrests, fake medical emergencies, you name it. Different scenarios, same playbook. A loved one's voice on the other end of the line claiming to be in some kind of crisis. So what actually happens on these calls? Virtual kidnapping scams where someone calls a person claiming to have their loved one and demanding ransom, have been around for years. The old version was crude, maybe like a generic recording of someone screaming in the background and a scripted set of threats. What has changed now and what keeps changing is the technology. AI voice cloning software can now replicate exactly what someone sounds like. Their specific cadence and inflection, even, like in Briana's case, the unique way they cry. And the raw material is everywhere. Voicemail, greetings, a TikTok, an Instagram reel, a YouTube video, a podcast, hi, anything. And they don't need much. Researchers at the cybersecurity company McAfee tested these tools a couple of years ago and found that just three seconds of audio, less time than it takes to say, hello, who's calling? Is enough to produce a convincing clone. And that was three years ago. Access to software that can do that costs as little as $5 a month now. Meanwhile, caller ID can be spoofed to display your loved one's actual name and number. And the scam keeps evolving. In December 2025, the FBI issued a warning that criminals are now pairing these calls with AI Altered proof of life photos, manipulated images of your loved one, often sent as disappearing messages. Time to vanish before you have a chance to really, like, look at them, criticize them, analyze them, Because a few seconds of panic is all it takes. Now, by all accounts, deepfake voice scams aren't just increasing, they're exploding. But clear statistics are hard to come by. The FBI told us that they get lumped into broader categories, and a lot of cases never even make it into the numbers at all. Some victims are embarrassed and don't report it. Others, like Jennifer's mom, don't even realize that they've been targeted. And some who do try to report it end up in Jennifer's position, being told by police that there's nothing they can do. Nothing happened. It was just a prank. And while local law enforcement is getting more familiar with these scams, they are still damn near impossible to investigate. One of the biggest issues is that a lot of these callers are operating outside of the US the money moves out of the country fast, and by the time anyone starts looking into it, there's almost nothing left to trace. Many of these scams originate in Mexico and target Latino families in the southwestern U.S. where it's more believable when someone says that a loved one has been taken over the border and held there. And those are also some of the communities least likely to report. So what do we know? These sorts of scams are basically run like a business. FBI agent Whitney Mitchell compared it to a call center with operators constantly cycling through numbers, threatening, demanding, and moving on. They go for volume over precision. They don't need many people to fall for it, because when someone does pay, the average amount is $11,000. But there aren't just financial concerns. Take an incident that happened last September in Kansas. A woman got a call that appeared to come from her mother's phone. A man on the other end of the line claimed to have a gun to her mom's head and was demanding a ransom. And in the background, she could hear what sounded exactly like her mother's voice. Her brother got an identical call. And when their mom didn't pick up her phone, they called 911. Police tracked their mother's phone location to a moving car, and thinking that it was an active hostage situation, they executed a high risk traffic stop with weapons drawn. What they found was the mother totally safe, unaware any of this was happening. Driving a man that she actually knew to pick up his car. Scammers had spoofed her number to make the calls appear to come from her, but she had no idea. Now, luckily, in that case, no one was hurt, at least not physically, but that was this time. And no one gets left unscathed. Even after the incidents that police just call a prank. Jennifer said that the trauma they went through was real and it stayed with her. It's something Brianna has continued to deal with even as she moves forward with her life. She's in college now where she is studying economics and believe it or not, AI. She's learning to harness the tech that was once used to terrorize her family and she's doing well. But the whole thing has left a lasting emotional scar on her and she's had to navigate more trauma after experiencing an AI generated active shooter hoax and multiple lockdowns on her college campus. Now, after Jennifer came forward with their story, the case became national news, the media attention reached Capitol Hill, and a senator asked Jennifer to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing on AI regulation, which she did in June 2023. And here is a clip from her testimony.
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Money scams have been around for thousands of years. This is entirely different. This is terrorizing, lasting trauma. Even months later, sharing the story makes me shake to my core. It was my daughter's voice, it was her cries, it was her sobs, it was the way she spoke. I will never be able to shake that voice and the desperate cries for help out of my mind. It's every parent's worst nightmare to hear your child pleading with fear and pain, knowing that they are being harmed and that you are helpless. The longer this form of terror remains unpunishable, the farther and more egregious it will become. As our world moves at a lightning fast pace, the human element of familiarity that lays foundation to our social fabric of what is known and what is truth is being revolutionized with AI. Some for good and some for evil. No longer can we trust, seeing as believing or I heard it with my own ears or even the sound of your own child's voice. I ask you, when your mother calls, are you going to hang up on her and call her back to make sure it's her. When your child calls in need of help, will you end the call and say, I don't believe it's really you? Is this our new normal? Is this the future we are creating by enabling the abuses of artificial intelligence without consequence and without regulation?
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So far, regulation hasn't caught up for the first time all 50 states introduced AI related legislation in 2025. But even with that movement, there is no clear roadmap at the federal level. Administrations are putting up and then pulling back guardrails like some kind of chess piece that will play well with whoever they're trying to appeal to or will make them the most money. No one is actually giving a shit about the people who are being hurt by this new technology that operates pretty much unregulated. One of the only major AI related laws Congress has actually managed to pass so far targets fake images. There is no comprehensive federal law specifically governing AI voice cloning. In a lot of ways, it is still like the Wild West. By the time anyone figures out how to respond to one version of this, the technology has already moved on, getting cheaper, faster and, and scariest of all, harder to detect. And it's especially hard if you're not clear headed. And that's what they're counting on. Hearing someone you love screaming for help. That panic that you feel isn't a side effect of the scam. It's the whole point. So what can we do? Here is what the FBI told us. And every situation is different, so there is no perfect playbook for it. But if you think your loved one is in real danger, call 911. If it turns out to be a scam, you'll sort that out after. When in doubt, call. At the same time, you have to try to stay calm and slow down. The entire scam runs on your fear. They need you scared. They need you reacting and moving fast for it to work. They don't want you questioning their story. But these calls are about money. And as long as they think that there is a chance you'll pay, they will probably stay on the line. So use that time. Reach out to your loved one on a separate device using a number that you already have, not one that the caller gives you. Now, if you're with someone, have them do it while you keep the caller talking. That's how Jennifer's situation ended as quickly as it did, according to the National Cybersecurity Alliance. You can also try asking the caller to switch to a video call. Most scammers don't have both a voice clone and a video deepfake ready at once. At least not yet. But even that won't be foolproof forever. And if they send you anything, photos, audio, proof of life, screenshot it or save it before it disappears, because it may be the only evidence they leave behind. But you know what they say? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And the biggest thing, like the thing you should do today, the second you're done listening to this episode, is to set up a safe word, a specific word or phrase that only your circle knows that you can demand. If you ever get that call, don't pick something obvious or easy to find out. No one's pets, names or birthdays or anything like that. Choose something that would be completely meaningless to a stranger. Hani Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics and misinformation, told Scientific American that he has a code word with his wife and his advice was to test each other on it occasionally because unlike a password, you won't use it often enough for it to stay fresh in your head. And you want it to be muscle memory when an emergency real or fake hits. Also, be sure to keep the word private, share it in person or through encrypted channels only, and don't ever post anything online that could give it away. I mean, I go an extra step further. We don't even say our word near our phones. Just some friendly advice from me. Your apps are listening now. If this happens to you, report it as soon as possible. No matter how it ends. Even if you never sent a dollar, even if you figured it out within seconds, that information matters. If money changes hands, contact your local FBI field office or call 1-800- call FBI. If there was no financial loss, you should still file a report@ic3.gov local police response to these calls can be inconsistent. Jennifer found that out firsthand, but IC3 makes sure the data gets to the right people. Either way, include everything you have. Phone numbers, audio screenshots, payment details. Investigators can't track a threat that they don't know exists, and every report, loss or no loss, helps them spot patterns, warn the public, and start disrupting the networks behind this. You should also share this episode with your loved ones, especially anyone who might be more vulnerable to a call like this. And you guys talk about it because honestly, one of the strongest defenses your family has is the conversation you have now before the phone rings, before the terror takes over, and before someone on the other end turns a voice that you trust into a weapon. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website crimejunkie.com don't forget to follow us on Instagram crimejunkiepodcast and we'll be back Monday with a full length episode. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck Princess production. I think Chuck would approve.