An Arizona mother feared for her life after she cloned her daughter’s voice and tricked her into thinking she was kidnapped and extorting money.
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This happened when Jennifer Destefano received a call from a private number.
As she answered, she heard the voice of her 15-year-old daughter, Brianna.
“I picked up the phone and heard my daughter’s voice crying, ‘Mommy.’ I was like, ‘What happened?’ And she was crying, ‘Mommy, I screwed up,'” the mom told Arizona’s family.
That’s when someone picked up the line to demand the ransom. He said he had his daughter and if he wanted to see her again, he would have to obey his orders.
After several minutes of panic and a call to 911, Ms. DeStefano finally got a call from the teenager who didn’t understand his mother’s panic.
The latter was safe and not abducted. In fact, the criminals cloned the young woman’s voice with artificial intelligence to extort money from her mother.
“I never doubted for a second that it was her,” she said, adding that this story still scares her.
