A California senior was scammed out of $25,000 by scammers who used an AI voice that impersonated his son to trick him into believing his loved one was involved in a “terrible accident” and needed money to be bailed out of jail.
The man, identified only as Anthony, said he received a call from who he thought was his son, saying he had hit a pregnant woman while driving, and that she had been “rushed to the ICU.” , thus ABC-7.
“It was his voice. It was definitely his voice,” he told the outlet. “There was no doubt about it.”
Anthony said the scammer hung up after a brief conversation – using his son’s AI-generated voice – but minutes later he received a second call from a man claiming to be his son’s lawyer, Michael Roberts.
“He said, ‘You need to get $9,200 as soon as possible if you want your son to get out of jail. Otherwise he will have to wait 45 days,” Anthony said.
Suspicious about the lawyer’s call, Anthony said he tried to call his son to verify he needed the bail money, but his call was sent to voicemail.
The concerned father then went to his bank and told the teller that he needed a large sum of money for the installation of solar panels – so as not to raise unwanted questions about the situation.
After returning home, Anthony had his daughter call the lawyer again, who told them that an Uber would be coming soon to pick up the deposit.
Surveillance cameras outside his home show his daughter verifying the Uber license plate number and handing over the money to the driver.
However, the scammers weren’t done yet.
Moments after the driver left, Anthony received another call, this time from a man named Mark Cohen, who identified himself as another attorney on his son’s case and told him that the pregnant woman had died and that his bail son was exalted.
“The bail has been increased. Mark Cohen says another $15,800 to $25,000,” Anthony related.
Fearing that his son desperately needs the money to be bailed out of prison, the concerned father returns to the bank and repeats the whole process.
After withdrawing more money from the bank and handing the second payment to another Uber driver, the calls stopped and Anthony wondered if his son had been released from jail.
While they waited, he said his daughter began researching the number and what was being said to him online, making a disheartening discovery.
“Daddy, I hope I’m wrong. I think you just got scammed out of $25,000,” he recalled his daughter telling him.
Anthony said he was so worried about his son’s fate that he “never thought about it” until he was cheated out of much of his life savings.
“I never had a chance to make a second call unless I said to them, ‘Wait a minute.’ I’m going to put this whole thing on hold for a moment. I want to talk to my son. I don’t care if he’s in jail or where he is, I want to talk to my son.” You don’t think like that. You don’t do that,’ he said.
The senior said the whole situation happened so “fast” that he didn’t have time to wonder if he was being scammed.
‘I look like a fool. I feel like a fool, but I don’t care,” Anthony said, explaining that he shared his story to help others become aware of the issue.
Detective Chelsea Saeger of the Los Angeles Police Department, told ABC-7 that scammers have become ‘smarter and more sophisticated’ in recent years.
“They use social media and technology to create these very believable and compelling stories, and people actually believe they are talking to a grandchild or a government official,” Saeger said.
While phone scams are not new, technological advances – particularly in artificial intelligence and number blocking – have opened a new playing field for fraudsters who prey on unsuspecting victims to steal their hard-earned money.
“They call, and if you answer and it’s a scammer, it’s silent,” Saeger explained.
“They want you to say ‘hello’ or ‘is anyone there?’ All they need is three seconds of your voice to input it into AI and clone it.”
The detective also said scammers will make “video posts” on social media to capture and clone voices and use them to defraud others.
Saeger told the outlet that the department was investigating what happened to Anthony and investigating the drivers who collected the money.
However, she revealed that Uber or Lyft drivers are usually not involved in the scam and are merely hired to perform the task – completely unaware that they are even part of the scam.
Saeger said you should never send money to someone you don’t know.
If they claim to be a government agency or financial institution, these places will never call and ask you to send money immediately.
She also shared that scammers may ask their “victims to deposit money into crypto ATMs or transfer money to crypto accounts,” which is a huge red flag.
