AI scam leaves Bryan mother traumatized, hopes story helps others
BRYAN, Texas - A Bryan mother says she’s traumatized after receiving a scam phone call that used Artificial Intelligence to recreate her daughter’s voice. It’s a scam the FBI says is growing in sophistication.
Amanda Murphy said it was a regular morning getting her family back into the swing of the school year. Her daughter mentioned stopping by Walmart to grab some school supplies on her way to work Monday morning.
“Then she was leaving for work at about 11 a.m. and I got a phone call five minutes later from an unknown number,” Amanda said. “[My daughter] came on the phone and she was screaming and crying, ‘Mom please help me, please come for me.’”
Amanda’s world changed with the heart-stopping phone call.
“I thought maybe she got in a fender bender. And she was in shock,” Amanda said she asked for her daughter’s location and then another voice started talking.
“A man came on the phone, and I assumed that was the other person that she had gotten in an accident with. And, he said ‘Is this your daughter, are you her mother?’ I said ‘Yes’ and then he started to say ‘I need you to do everything that I’m telling you to do or I’m gonna hurt your daughter’ and he said if I didn’t that he was going to sell her and that he was a trafficker, and I was never going to see her again.”
The man asked her to wire $3,000 to an account she could access through Walmart Money Services. But she had to stay on the phone the whole time. The man told Amanda he would know if she tried to contact anyone.
“He said ‘Okay, I see you coming in the parking lot. I need you to park and take down these directions.’ So, he gave me the name and he gave me the address and he said it’s Mexico City and then I go inside and I’m like worked up,” she said.
But Amanda says this is where the story started to turn around. Still on the phone with the scammer, Amanda said employees at Money Services noticed something was off.
“[The employee] goes and gets her manager and I’m just thinking ‘This is it. [My daughter is] gonna be hurt. She’s gonna be taken away from me, I’m never gonna see her again,’” Amanda said. But, that wasn’t the case. “She said ‘okay, where is [your daughter] supposed to be right now? What’s her name, write it down on the piece of paper and I’m going to call.’ So she called up to her work and got her on the phone.”
Amanda said the relief she felt in that moment took her to the ground.
“She’s like ‘Mom what is even going on? I don’t understand what’s happening.’ And I just broke down in the middle of Walmart. I had random people praying for me and people just asking if I was okay and it just ended. I got on the phone and I told [the scammer] ‘It’s over you’re found out, it’s done’ and I hung up,” Amanda said.
Amanda reported this incident to the police and the FBI but she was told these bad actors are often in other countries and nearly impossible to track down. Since the scam call happened, Amanda says she panicks every time she sees an unknown number pop up on her phone.
The FBI warns scams like these are growing in sophistication. They use AI programs to recreate or mimic a loved one’s voice and scam hundreds or even thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims.
“You could use AI now to find vulnerabilities that can be exploited, AI to write code to exploit those vulnerabilities, AI to conduct more sophisticated spear phishing efforts,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said. “We’re also worried about AI to enhance things like virtual kidnappings, where parents get a call and they think their child’s been kidnapped but now AI can mimic your child’s voice so it sounds even more credible.”
The FBI shared resources from their website here and the Federal Communications Commission with ways to avoid falling victim to this scam.
Amanda says she just hopes others won’t fall victim.
“This is out there, you just have to take a step back and understand what is happening and that this is happening everywhere,” she said.
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