A California senior was scammed out of $25,000 by a scammer using an AI voice imitating his son to trick him into believing his loved one had been involved in a “horrific accident” and needed bail money from jail. Ta.
According to ABC 7, the man, identified only as Anthony, received a call from someone who appeared to be his son, telling him he had hit a pregnant woman while driving and was “rushed to the ICU.”
“It was his voice. It was definitely his voice,” he told the media. “There was no doubt about that.”
After a short conversation, Anthony said, the scammer used her son’s AI-generated voice to hang up, but minutes later she received a second call from a man claiming to be her son’s lawyer, Michael Roberts. .
“He said, ‘If you want my son to get out of jail, you have to raise $9,200 as soon as possible.’ If he doesn’t, he’s going to be in the hospital for 45 days,” Anthony said. Ta.
Anthony said she became suspicious of the lawyer’s phone call and tried to call her son to see if he needed bail, but the call went to voicemail.
The concerned father then went to the bank and told the teller that he needed a large sum of money to install solar panels, to avoid unnecessary questions about the situation.
When she got home, Anthony had her daughter call her lawyer again, who told her an Uber would be coming soon to pick up the bail money.
Surveillance video outside the home showed her daughter checking the Uber license plate number and handing money to the driver.
But the scammers didn’t stop there.
Shortly after the driver left, Anthony received another call. This time, a man named Mark Cohen, claiming to be another attorney in his son’s case, informed him that the pregnant woman had died and that his son’s bail had been raised.
“Bail has been increased. Mark Cohen says another $15,800 to $25,000,” Anthony said.
Worried that his son desperately needs money to bail him out of prison, the father returns to the bank and repeats the whole process.
After withdrawing more money from the bank and giving the second payment to another Uber driver, the calls stopped and Anthony wondered if her son had been released from prison.
While waiting, he said his daughter began looking up the phone number and what he had been told online, where she made a disheartening discovery.
“‘Dad, I hope I’m wrong. I think you just got scammed out of $25,000,'” he recalled his daughter telling him.
Mr Anthony said he was so worried about his son’s fate that he “didn’t even think about it” until it happened that he had been defrauded of so much of his life savings.
“I didn’t get a chance to make a second call unless I said, ‘Hold on a second.'” Let’s stop this for a second. I want to talk to my son. I don’t care if he’s in prison or where he is, I want to talk to my son. ”You don’t think so. That’s not true,” he said.
The senior said the whole situation happened so “quickly” that he didn’t have time to question whether he was being scammed.
“I feel like an idiot. I feel like an idiot, but I don’t care,” Anthony said, explaining that he shared his story to help others become aware of the issue.
Los Angeles Police Department Detective Chelsea SagerAccording to the old ABC 7, scammers have become “more sophisticated and sophisticated” in recent years.
“They’re using social media and technology to create these stories that are so believable and so convincing that people really believe they’re talking to their grandchildren or government officials. ”Sager said.
Phone scams are not new, but advances in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence and number blockers, have created new playing fields for scammers hoping unsuspecting victims will steal their hard-earned money. is open.
“The phone rang, and when I answered the phone, it was a scammer, so there was silence,” Sager explained.
“They want you to say, ‘Hello,’ or ‘Is anyone here?’” All you have to do is input your voice into the AI for three seconds and have it replicated. ”
The detective also said scammers use “video posts” on social media to capture audio, which they then clone and use to scam others.
Sager told the station they are looking into what happened to Anthony and are looking into the driver who took the money.
However, she said Uber and Lyft drivers are usually not involved in fraud, they are simply hired to carry out a mission, and are completely unaware that they are even participating in a scam. clarified that it is not.
Sager said never send money to anyone you don’t know.
If they claim to be a government agency or financial institution, they will never call you and ask you to send money right away.
She also shared that scammers may ask “victims to deposit money into a crypto ATM or transfer money to a crypto account,” which is a major red flag.
