AI voice scam traps mom in 5-hour kidnapping nightmare

I want you to think about the voice of someone you love. You know how that person sounds when they're laughing, and you also know the voice you would hear if they were terrified. So what would you do if your phone rang and you heard that voice begging you for help? That's what happened to Deborah Del Mastro.

I recently sat down with Deborah on The CyberGuy Report podcast to hear her tell this story in her own words. Even after everything she has been through, you can hear how deeply the experience still affects her. Months after the scam, she also told a U.S. Senate committee that she remained "completely traumatized."

The California mother and Navy veteran was having breakfast with her husband when a local number appeared on her phone. The man on the other end claimed a Mexican drug cartel had taken her 37-year-old daughter Sarah. Then Deborah heard the voice that made the threat feel terrifyingly real. "It's my daughter's voice," she told me. "And she's having a panic attack."

For the next five and a half hours, the caller threatened Deborah and her family, sent her and her husband from place to place and demanded thousands of dollars. What Deborah didn't know was that the story unfolding on the phone was very different from what was actually happening to Sarah.

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THE FAMILY GROUP CHAT IS A GOLDMINE FOR SCAMMERS

The call started strangely enough. "I get a local phone call, my area code," Deborah told me. When she answered, the man asked, "Who is this?" Deborah turned the question back on him, and he replied that he was "someone you need to talk to."

Then he asked whether Deborah's daughter was prone to panic attacks. That question immediately got her attention. Deborah could hear commotion in the background before the caller put someone else on the line. She heard Sarah. The voice was crying and struggling to breathe. "I'm so sorry, Mom. I'm so scared," Deborah remembers hearing. "It was exactly her voice," she told me.

There was another reason Deborah believed she was hearing her daughter. Sarah had recently gone through a breakup, and Deborah had heard her daughter sobbing like that only days earlier. The sound on the phone matched something painfully familiar, which made the call even more convincing.

The man told Deborah that Sarah had witnessed something she was never supposed to see in a parking lot. He claimed ties to a Mexican drug cartel and said Sarah had her phone out when she saw what happened. According to Deborah, his boss had ordered him to take her.

Then he told Deborah what they wanted. "They were going to sell her for $20,000 unless I could come up with the money," Deborah told me. The threat became even darker. She said the caller repeatedly talked about selling Sarah and suggested she could "pay her way in other ways," leaving Deborah terrified that the criminals could sexually traffic her daughter. At that point, she believed violent criminals had Sarah.

One of his first instructions was to bring a phone charger. "He tells me that I better charge my phone or bring a phone charger because if my phone dies before we're finished, I'll never see her again," Deborah recalled. That told me a lot about how carefully this scam was run. The caller needed control. He demanded that Deborah keep the phone connected so he could hear what was happening around her. He wanted to know when she moved, what she was doing and who she was talking to.

At one point, Deborah muted the call so she could speak privately with her husband. The caller noticed and began screaming. He warned her against trying "funny business." Deborah told me, "He wants to keep my phone open right here so he can hear everything." That control continued for five and a half hours.

YOUR FAMILY COULD BE ONE PHONE CALL FROM A BANK SCAM

The caller initially wanted $20,000. Deborah didn't have it. "We just don't have that," she remembers telling him. So she started negotiating for what she believed was her daughter's life. "Now I'm bargaining with the devil," she told me. Deborah said she had roughly $2,000 in savings. The caller instructed her to go to a nearby Walmart and use MoneyGram to wire money to Mexico. She went, keeping the phone where he could hear everything happening around her.

The man warned that people were watching her in the parking lot and claimed undercover police officers were nearby. He also gave Deborah a story to use if anyone questioned the transfer. The caller told her to say she was helping a relative with medical expenses. "Be discreet," she remembers him telling her. That detail bothers me because scammers often go beyond demanding money. They prepare victims to get around the very people who might recognize that something is wrong.

Deborah moved from location to location sending money. When I asked whether anyone challenged her or asked whether she was OK, her answer was immediate. "No. No. Not at all." By then, the scammer had already given her a cover story. He had also spent hours convincing Deborah that talking to someone could get Sarah killed.

In the end, Deborah sent $5,400 through four separate transactions using MoneyGram and Western Union. She said the transfers took all the accessible money she and her husband had. Later, she put it to me another way: "We were held hostage for 5.5 hours." Deborah and her husband could physically move, but emotionally, the caller had them exactly where he wanted them.

Several hours into the call, Deborah kept asking to speak with her daughter again. Eventually, the caller agreed, but even that conversation came with instructions. He told Deborah exactly what she could say: "This nightmare is nearly over. We're going to come get you as soon as we can."

Then Sarah's voice responded. "I'm so sorry, Mom. I love you." I asked Deborah again whether it really sounded like her daughter. "It was her voice," she said. "It was absolutely her voice."

Immediately afterward, another man came onto the phone. Deborah described him as an "enforcer" whose threats sounded even harsher. Soon, the scammers demanded more money.

There's something Deborah later said that gives you an idea of where her mind had gone during those hours. While her husband drove and the caller listened over the phone, Deborah spent much of the trip sitting silently. Instead of wondering whether this could be a scam, her mind went to Sarah and whether she would survive it.

Deborah was already trying to figure out how her daughter would get through life after an experience like this. Paying the ransom was only part of what was running through her mind. She believed something terrible had already happened to her child and started thinking about how she would help Sarah recover afterward. That shows you how completely real this had become to her.

Eventually, the man told Deborah the ordeal was over. He claimed they had released Sarah outside a Walmart where Deborah and her husband were waiting. "Go get her," Deborah remembers him saying. Then he hung up.

Deborah could see the front entrance, so she got out of the car and looked for her daughter. Sarah wasn't there. For a moment, Deborah thought the criminals still had her even after taking every dollar she could reach. She frantically looked around before finally calling Sarah herself. Her daughter answered. "Hi, Mom. What's going on?" Sarah was at work.

For more than five hours, Deborah believed people were holding her daughter and might kill her or sell her. Then Sarah simply answered her phone from work. "I'd never been so relieved to be scammed in my life," Deborah told me.

She believes she screamed in the parking lot before the tears came. Deborah told Sarah she loved her, and after work, Sarah came to her parents' home. Her mother hugged her and sobbed. The family then went to the local police department to report what had happened. Losing the money hurt, but Sarah was alive.

When Deborah explained what had happened, Sarah had an immediate reaction. "Mom, that was probably an AI clone of my voice," Deborah remembers her saying. Both of Deborah's adult children work in IT, so they already knew this kind of technology existed. Deborah didn't. "I didn't know," she recalls.

Deborah firmly believes she heard an artificial intelligence-generated version of Sarah's voice. We do know the technology exists, and federal authorities have warned about criminals using it. The FTC says scammers can take a short clip of someone's real voice, including audio posted online, and use voice-cloning technology to make a call sound like that person.

The underlying scam has been around much longer than today's AI tools. The FBI calls it "virtual kidnapping." Criminals claim they have taken someone you love even though no kidnapping occurred.

One classic warning sign closely matches Deborah's experience. The FBI says virtual kidnappers often work hard to keep victims on the phone so they can't check where their loved one actually is. The agency has also warned about ransom demands involving wire transfers to Mexico.

More recently, the FBI warned that criminals are using altered media in virtual kidnapping schemes. AI can make an old scam much more convincing. Deborah put it perfectly: "It is an old scam with new technology."

One reaction Deborah still encounters is the question some people ask after a scam: Why didn't you hang up? Why didn't you know? Why didn't you tell someone? She understands those questions, but she also knows what was happening inside that call.

As a Navy veteran, Deborah describes herself as someone who stays calm in a crisis. "I always say I am the person that runs to the fire, not away from it." Yet the voice on the phone convinced her completely that Sarah was in danger.

That's something I want people to remember before judging anyone who falls for one of these calls. You can know about scams and handle pressure well. Then someone puts the terrified voice of your child in your ear. Criminals understand exactly what kind of emotional reaction they're trying to trigger.

The $5,400 represented every readily available dollar Deborah and her husband could access. She says they are seniors living on Social Security along with income from other work, so the loss hit them hard. The following morning, Deborah went to Facebook and told her community what had happened. She also warned that criminals now had "high-tech capability."

Friends began sending money, but Deborah initially resisted because she didn't want to profit from what happened. Eventually, they convinced her to create a fundraiser on GoFundMe limited to replacing what the couple had lost. Her community raised the money back. That support couldn't erase the five-and-a-half-hour ordeal, but it meant a great deal to Deborah. Her community had shown up for her before, and they showed up again.

You don't have to become an expert at detecting synthetic audio. In fact, I wouldn't build your family's defense around your ability to recognize a fake voice. A better approach is to decide now how your family will verify an emergency.

If someone claims your child, spouse or another relative has been kidnapped or injured, contact that person directly at the number you already have saved. If they don't answer, try someone who should know where they are. The FTC specifically recommends verifying the story through a phone number you know belongs to your loved one.

Choose a word or phrase that someone couldn't easily discover through social media. The FBI recommends establishing a family code word for situations like virtual kidnapping scams.

Deborah also recommends a safe word now, although her experience shows why you need more than one way to verify an emergency. "There was no way I could have done any of that in this particular situation," she told me. The caller controlled when she could speak with Sarah, so don't make a safe word your family's only verification method.

After the scam, Deborah and Sarah began using a location-sharing app so each could see where the other was. Apple and Google also offer built-in location-sharing options. If you want to set this up on your phone, see our guide on how to share your whereabouts in any situation using your cell phone.

Location sharing comes with its own privacy considerations, so only share your location with people you trust. An agreed-upon way to check someone's whereabouts can give your family another verification tool during an emergency.

Secrecy played a major role in Deborah's ordeal. The caller told her not to speak to anyone, listened during the transactions and gave her a fake explanation to use if someone asked questions. The FTC says urgency and secrecy are common characteristics of family emergency scams. If someone claims a loved one's survival depends on keeping you from contacting anyone else, treat that as a major warning.

Scammers like payment methods that move money quickly and make recovery difficult. The FTC specifically warns about emergency scammers demanding wire transfers, cryptocurrency and gift cards.

If you've already sent money, contact the bank or transfer company immediately and ask whether it can stop or recall the transaction. Then report what happened to local police and the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.

Your name, relatives, phone numbers and other family connections can appear across people-search sites and data broker databases. That information can make a fake emergency more believable. I've tried manually removing my own information from these sites before, and keeping up with it can turn into a job because the information often returns.

A data removal service can help automate some of that work by requesting removal of your information from people-search sites and data broker databases. You can also learn more in our CyberGuy guide on removing your personal information from the web. Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at CyberGuy.com.

This may be the most useful conversation you have with your family this week. Tell them that a familiar voice can be faked. Agree that nobody sends emergency money until someone verifies the situation another way. A few minutes spent setting that expectation today could become extremely important when someone tries to scare you tomorrow.

I've talked with a lot of scam victims over the years, and Deborah's story hit me hard. This wasn't some robotic impersonation that immediately made her suspicious. The voice sounded like her daughter having the kind of panic attack Deborah had heard before. For more than five hours, this guy kept her terrified and focused on one thing: getting Sarah home alive.

What stays with me most is where Deborah's mind went during that ordeal. Sitting in the car, she was already wondering how she would help Sarah recover from whatever these supposed kidnappers had done to her. That's a parent's mind at work. The money came later. Sarah came first.

I don't think the answer is expecting people to become experts at spotting fake audio. As the technology improves, a convincing voice could fool any of us. Instead, build another way to verify an emergency before one happens. Have a safe word, call your loved one directly and check with someone who may be physically near them. If your family feels comfortable using location sharing, set that up ahead of time.

Most importantly, talk about this with the people you love. Deborah had no idea this kind of voice scam was possible before that phone rang. Now she's sharing what happened because she doesn't want another parent sitting in a parking lot wondering whether their child is coming home. Watch or listen to my full conversation with Deborah on The CyberGuy Report podcast at CyberGuy.com.

If you heard what sounded exactly like your child or spouse crying and begging you not to hang up, would you remember to verify the call before sending money? What does your family have in place right now? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.

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