America
AI Voice Scams Cost $2.6 Billion a Year
Impersonating ransom victims with highly accurate audio and video a frightening new reality.
J BY MATTHEW LYSIAK
ennifer destefano, a mother from Scottsdale, Arizona, almost let the call go to voicemail, not recognizing
the number on her phone’s screen. However, because her 15-year-
old daughter Brianna was away skiing and she feared an accident, she decided to answer. What happened next was every parent’s worst nightmare. “I hear my daughter, it’s her
voice, and she says, ‘Mom!’ and she’s sobbing,” DeStefano told Newsmax. “I said, ‘What happened?’ And she
said, ‘Mom, I messed up,’ and she’s sobbing and sobbing.” Before DeStefano could make
sense of the situation, she hears another voice — this time, a man. “He says, ‘Listen here . . . I’ve got
your daughter. This is how it’s going to go down. You call the police, you
10 NEWSMAX | AUGUST 2025
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.’ “While he’s talking, in the background I hear my daughter going, ‘Help me, Mom. Please help me. Help me,’ and bawling. “And at that moment, I was just
terrifi ed. It was just a nightmare.” After a chaotic series of events
that included a $1 million ransom demand, a 911 call, and a frantic eff ort to reach Brianna, the “kidnapping” was exposed as a scam. DeStefano remains shocked by
how realistic the AI voice sounded. “It was unmistakably her voice. The infl ection was hers, and it was as if she would have cried,” she explained of the 2023 incident. “I never doubted for a moment that it was her.” A new type of criminal has emerged — one armed not with
guns or knives, but with algorithms and artifi cial intelligence (AI) as scammers increasingly leverage cutting-edge AI technologies ranging from deepfake videos to voice cloning to orchestrate sophisticated fraud, extortion, and scams. Americans lose an estimated
$2.95 billion each year in imposter scams, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Once the realm of science fi ction, impersonating someone with highly accurate audio and video has become a frightening reality, according to Amy Nofziger, director of victim support for the AARP’s Fraud Watch Network. “We have defi nitely seen an acceleration in AI crimes, both in terms of victims and sophistication, as this technology has evolved to just a terrifying degree,” Nofziger told Newsmax. “Through the use of AI tools,
these scammers can take any message they want to send and make it sound like it is coming from a close
CHRIS DELMAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES / PHONE/B4LLS©ISTOCK / SCREENS/LAURENCE DUTTON©ISTOCK
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