TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — It’s a scenario every mother dreads: receiving a call and hearing your daughter’s tearful voice, announcing something dreadful has occurred.
“No one could persuade me it wasn’t her; I’m familiar with my daughter’s cry,” expressed Sharon Brightwell. “Regardless of her age, her cry is unmistakable to me.”
Brightwell said the woman on the line claimed she’d been in a crash that she had hit a pregnant driver while texting.
A person posing as a lawyer jumped on, saying bail would be $15,000 in cash.
So she gave it to them, but later got a call from a family friend.
“I screamed,” Brightwell said. “I literally screamed and cried.”
“I said, ‘Oh, dear Lord,'” she continued. “Then she had my daughter on three-way and I hear my daughter’s voice.”
“She says, ‘Mom,'” Brightwell recalled. “I go, ‘April, are you okay?'”
“She said, ‘I am, Mom. I’m still at work,'” she concluded.
It turns out the entire thing was a lie, likely powered by artificial intelligence.
“One thing AI can do much, much faster than we can is learn the patterns of voices,” Tech consultant Joey De Villa said.
De Villa explained, AI has the capabilities to mimic not only your voice, but video too.
So, how can you spot the red flags?
“Even with the use of AI, it’s essentially advanced technology layered over traditional scam tactics,” he stated. “Their most effective strategy is creating a sense of urgency, which heavily plays to their advantage.”
While keeping an eye out for those red flags, De Villa said, there are preventative measures you can put in place to better protect you and your family.
“Come up with passphrases, something that only you and maybe you’re family would know, like some kind of phrase that you can say to really prove it’s you,” he explained. “Failing that, maybe some kind of inside family story or joke.”
