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Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And the story I have for you today is one that I want you to listen
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to every single second of. Because by the time it's over, you're going to want to call every person you love and do one
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simple thing that could save you from one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable. This is about something
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that's happening right now to real people. And as technology gets more advanced, so do the criminals looking to
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exploit it. Lots of people have no idea that this is even possible. And the real unsettling part? How cheap
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and accessible the tools to do this actually are, and how fast they're evolving. This is the story about how
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hearing the voice of someone you love could be the beginning of a nightmare. And what you can do to fight back.
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Jennifer DeStefano is one of those moms who's always on the move. She and her husband have four kids in close age, and
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most weekends that means splitting up just to keep up. So on this particular late Friday afternoon, January 20th,
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2023, while Jennifer is in Scottsdale, Arizona, swinging by their 13-year-old daughter's dance studio to pick her up
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after a lesson, her husband is about 150 miles north in the mountains with their
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youngest son and their 15-year-old daughter Breonna, so she can do some training for ski races. [music]
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Now, Jennifer is getting out of her car in the studio parking lot when her phone
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rings. It's an unknown number, and she almost lets it go to voicemail, but unknown calls can be from hospitals. And
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with Breonna on a mountain, it's too risky to ignore [music] it, so she picks up. And it is Breonna on the line, but
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she's crying, barely holding it together. And she tells Jennifer, "Mom, I messed up." Now, Jennifer doesn't
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panic. She's thinking that maybe Breonna got hurt skiing. So she's like, you know, it's okay, Bri, calm down. What's
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going on? What's wrong? And then she hears a man's [music] voice cut in. Telling Breonna to lay down and put her
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head back. And then suddenly she hears her daughter cry out, "Mom, these bad men have me. Help me. Help me." And then
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the man fully takes the phone and he tells Jennifer that he has her daughter. And if she calls the police or breathes
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a word of this to anyone, they will never see her again because he's going to drug her, sexually
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assault her, and leave her for dead in Mexico. [music] She can barely hear what he's saying
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because all she can focus on is her daughter in the background yelling and pleading until her voice goes muffled
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like she's being pulled away from the phone. Jennifer is shaking as she pushes through the dance studio doors. Now, she
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keeps the man on speakerphone, but mutes herself so he can't hear her and she screams for help. And other moms gather
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fast. One rushes outside to call 911 while the rest surround Jennifer and listen as the caller makes threat after
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horrifying threat. >> [music] >> And Jennifer begs to speak to her daughter again. But the man won't put
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her back on the phone. He's doing all of the talking now. And what he wants in exchange for Breonna's life is
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staggering. $1 million dollars. Jennifer is willing to agree to anything right now. But once
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she starts questioning how she's supposed to get him all that money, the guy starts doing the math in his head
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and he decides on his own that there's no way she's going to be able to come up with that much money because he wants
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cash only and he's not going to give her time to get it together. So, he makes this quick decision to give her a
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discount. [music] He'll take $50,000 instead. And he's adamant. He's not willing to mess with wire transfers or
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routing numbers. All that stuff is way too traceable. So, this is the plan. He says she needs to get the 50 grand
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together >> [music] >> and then he's going to come pick her up in a white van. She'll get in, he'll put
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a bag over her head, and then he'll bring her to some undisclosed place to exchange the money for Breonna.
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And he warns Jennifer, >> [music] >> she better have every dollar on her when he gets there. Otherwise,
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both her and her daughter are dead. Now, this whole time, Jennifer's younger daughter has been just
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>> [music] >> standing there, frozen in fear as she listens to this man threaten to assault
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and kill her sister and her mother. So, another parent actually grabs the girl's
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phone and tries to contact Jennifer's husband, because he's way more likely to answer from his other daughter's number
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than one he doesn't recognize, and they need to get in touch with him and find out what's going on. How long has she
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been gone? Does he even know that she's missing yet? But, when she calls, the phone just rings
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>> [music] >> and rings and rings and keeps rolling over to voicemail. As all of this chaos
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is unfolding, the mom who called 911 comes back inside and begins talking to Jennifer. She says, [music]
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"This has to be fake. The 911 dispatcher had told her that they've gotten more and more of these lately. A recording of
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a loved one made from AI. They ask you to get some gift cards, Bitcoin, or something." But, Jennifer pushes back.
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She's like, "That's not what this is. It wasn't a recording. This was a back-and-forth interactive conversation
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with her daughter." And on top of that, they wanted to meet to get the money, which is like a whole different
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ballgame, the likes of which the department probably hasn't seen. Still, according to the dispatcher they have on
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the line, they say, "Don't trust it. The technology is advanced enough [music] for you to have a conversation with it.
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It can even replicate emotions in someone's voice." But, Jennifer isn't buying it. This wasn't just an emotional
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voice. It was Breonna's emotional voice, right down to the specific, unique way that
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she cries, like the distinct quiver in her voice. How could a machine fake that? It seems impossible. So, Jennifer
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is still keeping the guy on the line trying to stall until police arrive promising him that she's doing
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everything she can to pull the money together. Then, in the midst of her panic, someone hands her a different
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phone and it's a familiar voice she hears. Her husband's. He had been in the shower, which is why he'd missed the
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barrage of calls over the past few minutes, but he's confused by the urgency because Brianna's fine. He's
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looking at her. She's catching up on homework, not begging for her life. And they are both totally in the dark about
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everything that's happening back in Scottsdale where Jennifer is. After what she has just been through hearing that
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Brianna is fine from her husband isn't even enough. Jennifer needs to hear it from Brianna, but even her daughter's
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voice on the line doesn't totally reassure her like she thought it would. She can't trust her own ears right now.
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She keeps asking her, "Is it really you? Are you really okay?" over and over again until finally [music]
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it sinks in. Her daughter is alive and well. And once she is finally convinced, Jennifer turns back to the would-be
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kidnapper on the phone, but she's not fearful anymore. Now she is furious. [music]
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She tells him that what he's doing is one of the most evil things a person can do.
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And he tries to double down. He keeps insisting that he has her daughter and threatening to kill them both. But by
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this point Jennifer is done. >> [music] >> She hangs up before she just collapses
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on the floor in relief. Now this whole ordeal lasted about [music] 4 minutes. But when Jennifer thinks about the
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damage that it did cause >> [music] >> and what it could have caused, it's chilling. And if there had been
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someone to come get her, police wouldn't have been hot on her trail because by the way, they never showed up. I guess
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since the dispatcher had already concluded it was a scam, they didn't even bother to send anyone, which is
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kind of wild to me. Because I don't care how many of these calls that they've been hearing about, this one sounds
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extreme. Like even if it started as a scam, God only knows where this was headed. Like what was the end game? Was
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it all a test? Would someone have shown up for her? I don't know, and neither does Jennifer.
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But when she followed up with law enforcement later that night, >> [music] >> she was basically told
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no harm, no foul. They said there was no actual crime committed. No one was physically
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kidnapped or harmed, no money exchanged hands. It was deemed a prank. >> [music]
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>> That is not enough for Jennifer. She stays up all night trying to answer the questions running through her mind.
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How did they get her daughter's voice? >> [music] >> Were they being watched? Had they been
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targeted? Were they in any danger actually then or still? As she told our reporter Nina, she went through every
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piece of Brianna's digital footprint that she could find. But Brianna's Instagram and her TikTok accounts are
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private, and she only has a few dozen followers. And while there are a couple of like athletics related things of her
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out there, there is nothing that comes close to explaining what Jennifer heard on that call. So still, to this day, she
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hasn't been able to figure out how they did it. >> [music] >> But what she does find is a vast
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community of people who have been through something similar. Because when Jennifer posted a warning about what
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happened to her on Nextdoor, >> [music] >> the responses flood in. Some people were
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nasty and said that Jennifer was just being gullible. But lots came back with their own versions of this same story.
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This happened to me. This happened to my parents, to my sibling. One of the dance
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studio moms said that her sister had recently been scammed out of $1,500 by the same type of call. A friend of
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Jennifer's got a call that sounded exactly like her 8-year-old son begging for his life after she had just tucked
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him into bed. The caller even used his private nickname. And this kid didn't even have a phone or social media or any
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presence online. So, who the hell knows how they managed to replicate his voice?
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>> [music] >> I mean, Jennifer's own mother had gotten a call from someone pretending to be
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Jennifer's brother. But her mom is hard of hearing, so she kept asking the caller to repeat himself, and eventually
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she just told him, "My son would never talk to me like this. Go find your real mother." And she hung up on him. And her
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mom didn't even think to mention it until Jennifer's whole ordeal happened. And these weren't just
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>> [music] >> fake kidnappings. Jennifer heard about fake arrests, fake medical emergencies,
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you name it. Different scenarios, same [music] playbook. A loved one's voice on the other end of the line claiming to be
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in some kind of crisis. So, what actually happens on these calls? Virtual kidnapping scams, where
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someone calls a person claiming to have their loved one and demanding ransom, have been around for years. The old
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version was crude. Maybe like a generic recording of someone screaming in the background and a scripted set of
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threats. What has changed now, and what keeps [music] changing, is the technology. AI
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voice cloning software can now replicate exactly what someone sounds like, their
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specific cadence and inflection. Even like in Brianna's case, the unique way they cry. And the raw material is
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everywhere. Voicemail greetings, a TikTok, an Instagram reel, a YouTube video, a podcast. Hi. Anything.
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And they don't need much. Researchers at the cybersecurity company McAfee tested
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these tools a couple of years ago and found that just 3 seconds of audio, less time than it takes to say, "Hello, who's
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calling?" is enough to produce a convincing clone. And that was 3 years ago. Access to
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software that can do that costs as little as $5 [music] a month now. Meanwhile, caller ID can be
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spoofed to display your loved one's actual name and number. And [music] the scam keeps evolving.
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In December 2025, the FBI issued a warning that criminals are now pairing these calls with AI-altered
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proof-of-life photos. [music] Manipulated images of your loved one, often sent as disappearing messages,
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timed to vanish before you have a chance to really like look at them, criticize them, analyze them. Cuz a few seconds of
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panic is all it takes. Now, by all accounts, deepfake voice scams aren't just increasing, [music] they're
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exploding. But clear statistics are hard to come by. The FBI told us that they get lumped
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into broader categories, and a lot of cases never even make it into the numbers at all. Some victims are
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embarrassed and don't report it. Others, like Jennifer's mom, don't even realize
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that they've been targeted. And some who do try to report it end up in Jennifer's position, being told by
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police that there's nothing they can do. Nothing happened. It was just a prank. And while local law enforcement is
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getting more familiar with these scams, they are still damn near impossible to investigate. One of the biggest issues
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is that a lot of these callers are operating outside of the US. >> [music] >> The money moves out of the country fast,
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and by the time anyone starts looking into it, there's almost nothing left to trace. Many of these scams originate in
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Mexico and target Latino families in the Southwestern US, where it's more believable when someone says that a
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loved one has been taken over the border and held there. And those are also some
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of the communities least likely to report. So, what do we know? These sorts of scams are basically run
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like a business. FBI agent Whitney Mitchell compared it to a call center with operators constantly cycling
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through numbers, threatening, demanding, and moving on. They go for volume over precision. They don't need many people
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to fall for it because when someone does pay, the average amount is $11,000. But there aren't just financial
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concerns. Take an incident that happened last September in Kansas. >> [music] >> A woman got a call that appeared to come
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from her mother's phone. A man on the other end of the line claimed to have a gun to her mom's head and was demanding
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a ransom. And in the background, [music] she could hear what sounded exactly like
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her mother's voice. Her brother got an identical call, and when their mom didn't pick up her phone, they called
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911. Police tracked their mother's phone location to a moving car, and thinking that it was an active hostage situation,
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they executed a high-risk traffic stop with weapons drawn. What they found was the mother, totally safe, unaware any of
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this was happening, driving a man that she actually knew to pick up his car. Scammers had spoofed her number to make
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the calls appear to come from her, but she had no idea. [music] Now, luckily in that case, no one was hurt, at least not
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physically. >> [music] >> But that was this time, and no one gets left unscathed even after the incidents
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that police [music] just call a prank. Jennifer said that the trauma they went through was real, [music]
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and it stayed with her. It's something Brianna has continued to deal with even as she moves forward with
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her life. >> [music] >> She's in college now, where she is studying economics and, believe it or
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not, AI. [music] She's learning to harness the tech that was once used to terrorize her family,
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and she's doing well. But the whole thing left a lasting emotional scar on her, and she's had to
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navigate more trauma after experiencing an AI-generated active shooter hoax and multiple lockdowns on her college
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campus. Now, after Jennifer came forward with their story, the case became national news. [music] The media
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attention reached Capitol Hill, and a senator asked Jennifer to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee at a
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hearing on AI regulation, >> [music] >> which she did in June 2023. And here is a clip from her [music]
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testimony. >> Money scams have been around for thousands of years. This is entirely
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different. This is terrorizing lasting trauma. Even months later, sharing the story makes me shake to my core. It was
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my daughter's voice. It was her cries. It was her sobs. It was the way she spoke. I will never be able to shake
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that voice and the desperate cries for help out of my mind. It's every parent's worst nightmare to hear your child
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pleading with fear and pain, knowing that they are being harmed and that you're helpless.
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The longer this form of terror remains unpunishable, the farther and more egregious it will become. As our world
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moves at a lightning fast pace, the human element of familiarity that lays foundation to our social fabric of what
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is known and what is truth is being revolutionized with AI. Some for good and some for evil. No
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longer can we trust seeing is believing, or I heard it with my own ears, or even
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the sound of your own child's voice. I ask you, when your mother calls, are you going to hang up on her and call her
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back to make sure it's her? When your child calls in need of help, will you end the call and say I don't
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believe it's really you? Is this our new normal? Is this the future we are creating by enabling the abuses of
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artificial intelligence without consequence and without regulation? >> So far, regulation hasn't caught up.
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[music] For the first time, all 50 states introduced AI-related legislation in 2025. But even with that movement,
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there is no clear roadmap. At the federal level, administrations are putting up and then pulling back
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guardrails like some kind of chess piece that will play well with whoever they're
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trying to appeal to or will make them the most money. >> [music] >> No one is actually giving a [ __ ] about
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the people who are being hurt by this new technology that operates pretty much unregulated. One of the only major
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AI-related laws Congress has actually managed to pass so far targets fake images. There is no comprehensive
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federal law specifically governing AI voice cloning. In a lot of ways, it is still like the Wild West. By the time
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anyone figures out how to respond to one version of this, the technology has already moved on, getting cheaper,
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faster, >> [music] >> and scariest of all, harder to detect. And it's especially hard if you're not
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clear-headed. And that's what they're counting on. >> [music] >> Hearing someone you love screaming for
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help, that panic that you feel isn't a side effect of the scam, it's the whole point.
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So, what can we do? Here is what the FBI told us. And every situation is different, so there is no
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perfect playbook for [music] it. But if you think your loved one is in real danger, call 911. If it turns out
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to be a scam, you'll sort that out after. When in doubt, call. At the same time, you have to try to stay calm and
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slow down. The entire scam >> [music] >> runs on your fear. They need you scared,
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they need you reacting and moving fast for it to work. They don't want you questioning their story. But these calls
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are about money, and as long as they think that there is a chance you'll pay, they will probably stay on the line. So,
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use that time. Reach out to your loved one on a separate device using a number that you already have, not one that the
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caller gives you. Now, if you're with someone, have them do it while you keep the caller talking. That's how
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Jennifer's situation ended as quickly as it did. >> [music] >> According to the National Cybersecurity
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Alliance, you can also try asking the caller to switch to a video call. Most scammers don't have both a voice clone
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and a video deepfake ready at once. >> [music] >> At least not yet. But even that won't be foolproof
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forever. And if they send you anything, photos, audio, proof of life, screenshot
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it or save it before it disappears because it may be the only evidence they leave behind. But you know what they
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say, an ounce of prevention [music] is worth a pound of cure. And the biggest thing, like the thing you should do
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today, the second you're done listening to this episode, is to set up a safe word, a specific word or phrase that
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only your circle knows that you can demand if you ever get that call. Don't pick something obvious or easy to
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find out. No one's pets' names or birthdays or anything like that. Choose something that would be completely
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meaningless to a stranger. Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes
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in digital forensics and misinformation, told Scientific American that he has a code word with his wife. And his advice
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was to test each other on it occasionally because, unlike a password, you won't use it often enough for it to
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stay fresh in your head. And you want it to be muscle memory when an emergency, real or fake, hits. Also, be sure to
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keep the word [music] private. Share it in person or through encrypted channels only. And don't ever post anything
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online that could give it away. I mean, I go an extra step further. We don't even say our word near our phones. Just
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some friendly advice from me. Your apps are listening. [music] Now, if this happens to you, report it
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as soon as possible, no matter how it ends. Even if you never sent a dollar, even if you figured it out within
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seconds, that information matters. If money changes hands, contact your local FBI field office or call
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1-800-CALL-FBI. [music] If there was no financial loss, you should still file a report at IC3.gov.
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Local police response to these calls can be inconsistent. Jennifer found that out
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firsthand. But IC3 makes sure the data gets to the right people. Either way, include everything you have. Phone
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numbers, audio, screenshots, payment details. >> [music] >> Investigators can't track a threat that
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they don't know exists. And every report, loss or no loss, helps them spot patterns, warn the public, and start
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disrupting the networks behind this. You should also share this episode with your loved ones, especially anyone who
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might be more vulnerable to a call like this. And you guys, talk about it. Because honestly, one of the strongest
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defenses your family has is the conversation you have now, before the phone rings, before the terror takes
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over, and before someone on the other end turns a voice that you trust into a weapon.
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>> Meow.