Every parent’s worst nightmare: Terrifying new AI scam CLONED teenage girl’s voice to call her mother and demand $1million ransom

• Jennifer DeStefano received a call from an unknown number with her daughter screaming in the background
• In reality, her daughter was safe on a ski trip and her voice had been cloned  

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. 

A terrified call from your screaming child and a faceless kidnapper demanding $1million for their safe return. 

When Arizona mother Jennifer DeStefano received such a demand from her 15-year-old daughter Brie this week, she panicked, froze and started thinking about how much she could afford to save her daughter’s life. 

Only Brie wasn’t gagged or on her way to Mexico, as the voice had claimed. 

She was safe on a ski trip, completely unaware of the terror her mother was enduring. 

That is the frightening reality of the latest danger to be posed by increasingly threatening AI technology that now needs just three seconds of a sample to clone a person’s voice and weaponize it against their nearest and dearest. 

Jennifer DeStefano received a call from an unknown number and faceless kidnapper. In the background, she heard her 15-year-old daughter Brie’s terrified voice

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NBJvljFBuvg%3Frel%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26hl%3Den-US

‘In the background she’s going, “Help me, Mom. Please help me. Help me,” and bawling.” DeStefano said the call was ‘exactly’ the way her daughter Brie would scream and cry

DeStefano’s daughter does not have any public social media accounts, but her voice can be heard on a handful of interviews carried out for school and sports, her mom says. 

Recently she received a call from an unknown number while her daughter was out of town skiing. 

‘I pick up the phone and I hear my daughter’s voice, and it says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing.

‘I said, “What happened?” And she said, “Mom, I messed up,” and she’s sobbing and crying,’ she recalled to local Scottsdale station WKYT. 

She then heard a man telling Brie to ‘put her head back down’ and ‘lie down.’ 

Brie was safe on a ski trip, completely unaware of the terror her mother had endured 

‘This man gets on the phone and he’s like, “Listen here. I’ve got your daughter. This is how it’s going to go down. 

‘You call the police, you call anybody, I’m going to pop her so full of drugs. I’m going to have my way with her and I’m going to drop her off in Mexico.”

‘And at that moment, I just started shaking.

‘In the background she’s going, “Help me, Mom. Please help me. Help me,” and bawling.” 

At first he demanded $1million. When she said she didn’t have the money, he lowered the demand to $50,000. 

At the time of the call, DeStefano was surrounded by other mothers at her other daughter’s dance practice. 

They called 911 while she was still on the phone to the scammer and also called her husband, who verified that Brie was safe. 

Rather than wire the funds, the scammer demanded that to meet DeStefano in person. 

Now, she is warning other parents about the dangers of the fast-developing technology.  

‘It was completely her voice. It was her inflection. It was the way she would have cried. 

‘I never doubted for one second it was her. That’s the freaky part that really got me to my core.’ 

‘My greatest fear is that this will be used to physically lure and kidnap others as they had demanded of me. 

‘If this has happened to you, or anyone you know, please report! The only way to stop this is with public awareness!

‘Also, have a family emergency word or question that only you know so you can validate you are not being scammed with AI!’ she said on Facebook. 

There are growing fears over the rapid development of AI technology including ChatGPT 

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