Jennifer thought her teen was on holiday, but then she received a shocking call…
Walking through the car park, my phone rang.
I was picking my daughter Aubrey, 13, up from her dance class.
My husband had taken my eldest daughter Briana, 15, on a ski trip, so it was just me and Aubrey for the next few days.
Unknown number, the screen read.
With Briana skiing, I picked up immediately, worried she might have been in an accident.
Suddenly I heard Briana crying.
‘Mum! I messed up!’ she sobbed down the line.
‘Tell me what happened?’ I soothed.
But instead of getting an answer, I heard a man’s voice.
‘Lay down!’ he barked. ‘Put your head back.’
‘What’s going on?’ I panicked.
Has she been injured on a slope? I thought in horror.
But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.
‘Mum, these bad men have me,’ she said, crying. ‘Help me, help me!’
Suddenly, the phone was taken from her.
‘I have your daughter. You call the police, you call anybody — I'm gonna pop her so full of drugs,’ a man threatened. ‘I'm gonna have my way with her, and you're never going to see her again.’
My blood ran cold.
I put the call on mute and ran into the dance studio.
'These bad men have me'
‘My girl’s been kidnapped!’ I cried to the other mums.
They sprang into action. One stayed with me to listen to the call, while another consoled a terrified Aubrey and a third rang the police.
Then the kidnapper started barking orders.
‘You need to pay me one million in cash if you want to see your daughter again,’ he instructed.
I unmuted the phone.
‘That’s not possible,’ I said shakily.
‘OK — 50K in cash then,’ he snapped.
Only then, the mum who had called the police returned with news.
‘Police say there’s a scam that uses artificial intelligence,’ she said. ‘They can mimic someone’s voice.’
‘I heard Briana,’ I insisted. ‘It was her, how could it be fake?’
I couldn’t take the risk — it was my daughter’s life.
I asked the kidnapper for wiring instructions.
‘No, you need to get in a van with a bag over your head and 50K in cash to be transported to your daughter,’ he said. ‘If you don’t have all the money, then both of you will be dead.’
‘Your husband is on the line,’ another mum said.
I put her phone to my ear, not sure if I could take any more.
‘Jennifer, Briana is resting safely in bed,’ he reassured me. ‘She’s safe.’
But I was so sure of her voice.
‘Put her on,’ I begged,
My husband passed the phone over and I’d never felt so relieved to hear my girl’s voice.
But then anger took over.
‘How dare you try to extort money from me,’ I shouted down the line to the kidnapper.
But he still threatened to kill my daughter.
‘I’m going to make sure you don’t hurt me or anyone else again,’ I promised before hanging up.
Once it had sunk in that the scammer had used AI to replicate my daughter’s voice, I called the police.
‘It’s a prank call,’ an officer said. ‘Sadly they’re quite commonplace and there’s nothing we can do about it.’
I was told no actual crime had been committed, because there had been no kidnapping or money transferred.
It was hard to accept. How would these people ever be stopped?
That night, I couldn’t sleep as I wondered how they’d managed to get my girl’s voice?
Briana didn’t have a public social-media presence.
Perhaps they’d taken it from a school video or something else she’d done in the past. But no one really knew.
Two days later, Briana returned home and I gave her the biggest hug.
Now I’ve called on lawmakers to take action to help prevent criminal abuse of emerging AI technology.
Scammers stole and weaponised a piece of my daughter.
It’s terrifying to think what the future could hold.
Jennifer DeStefano