A distraught mum broke down in tears once she heard from her daughter – but a web of lies soon unravelled after a suspicious phone call about a car crash
A woman has fallen victim to a scam after cruel fraudsters used artificial intelligence to clone her daughter’s voice, convincing her to hand over £11,000 [$15,000].
Sharon Brightwell, from Florida, received a call on July 9 from a number resembling her daughter’s. When she answered, she heard what she believed was her daughter crying and saying she had been involved in a serious car accident.
“There is nobody that could convince me that it wasn’t her,” Sharon told WFLA. “I know my daughter’s cry.| The caller claimed to have crashed into a pregnant woman while texting and driving.
A mystery man, claiming to be an attorney, then took over and told a distraught Sharon that her daughter was being detained and needed £11,000 [$15,000] in bail money.
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Sharon withdrew the money and followed the delivery instructions given to her. But the scammers soon called again, saying the pregnant woman had lost her baby and was threatening to sue unless she sent an additional £22,000 [$30,000].
It was at this point that Sharon’s grandson intervened. Together with a family friend, he helped her contact her real daughter, who was unharmed and still at work. “When I heard her voice, I broke down,” Sharon admitted.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that a police report has been filed and detectives are investigating the case.
“That is all the information we have at this time as it remains an active investigation,” officials said in a statement.
Sharon’s daughter, April Monroe, later explained on GoFundMe that scammers had used AI technology to clone her voice.
“My voice was AI cloned and sounded exactly like me,” she wrote. “My mom and son were in absolute shock.”
April said she was on her lunch break when her family was frantically trying to reach her. A family friend eventually connected her to her mother in a three-way call to prove she was safe.
“I have never heard the sounds she made when she heard that I was fine,” April wrote.
She added that her father is dealing with a botched surgery and dementia, leaving her mother under significant stress and more vulnerable to the scam. “We only hope it will prevent this from continuing to victimise vulnerable people,” she said.
Voice-cloning scams are on the rise globally as AI technology becomes more accessible. Criminals can replicate a person’s voice using just a few seconds of audio taken from social media, voicemail, or other recordings.
In the UK, the government has warned that AI scams are on the rise as technology becomes more realistic. “Fraudsters are able to use increasingly sophisticated methods, relying on the systematic analysis of large amounts of data in an effort to identify and exploit vulnerabilities that might exist in our organisations for their own gain,” explains the Gov website.
“Artificial intelligence is not new but we have seen accelerated coverage in the media and as a hot topic at public and private sector events in recent years.”
The UK has launched an AI Safety Institute to help crackdown on AI safety.
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