Even for the tech-savvy, it’s spectacularly creepy. Using artificial intelligence scam artists are now perfectly replicating the voices of loved ones to con you out of money.

A classic scam, sometimes called the grandparent scam, used to involve a bad guy calling you and saying, “Gram?” or “Mom?” and they would make themselves sound "off" by sounding extremely upset and possibly injured. Often the victim would answer with the name of the loved one such as, “Mark?”

“Yeah, it’s Mark, I’m in big trouble I’ve been in a car accident…”

attachment-Scam
loading...

AI has now opened up a whole new world to scammers because they are using it to make Mark sound exactly like Mark. The exact voice, the right cadence, the inflections, all of it. There is no reason to think it isn’t a loved one in big trouble.

This happened with an attorney from Philadelphia, Gary Schildhorn. Asbury Park Press ran a story on his harrowing ordeal a few years ago. He received a call from a local number and his son’s unmistakable voice was on the line saying how he’d had a car accident with a pregnant woman and was at a local jail.

It was his son’s voice on the phone, but it wasn’t his son. Scammers used artificial intelligence to perfectly imitate him, possibly from some brief voice clip on social media.

Schildhorn was very good at spotting scams but almost fell for this one.

“It was his cadence. It was his tone. It was the words he would use. It was his voice,” Schildhorn said in an interview on a CNN podcast called Terms of Service.

How do you protect yourself when you receive a phone call from the very voice of your wife or husband, son or daughter? It sucks that we now have to think this is a possibility when we hear a loved one’s voice. Experts offer the following advice.

Canva / TSM Illustration
Canva / TSM Illustration
loading...

If you receive a suspicious call hang up and call the number back. Many times the number you see appear on your phone isn’t the actual number calling you because the scam artist is spoofing the number.

Take the time to doubt. One of the key weapons scammers use is urgency. The more urgent a situation is made to sound the less time you’ll have to think clearly. No one wants a loved one in an emergency upset. But if it’s real, remaining in that situation for just five extra minutes isn’t going to destroy them and can give you the time needed to just think.

Establish an emergency code word with your loved ones. An unusual word that is not kept somewhere hackers can find. An unusual word that a potential victim can use in saying, “OK, Mark, you know we have a code word for this type of thing. What’s the word?”

In 2025 it comes down to not believing everything you hear, not even the voice of your closest loved one.

Ignore these calls, NJ! Area codes you should never pick up

While dodging scam calls can feel a bit like playing “Wack a mole” on the boardwalk, there are some area codes that are giant red flags, as collected by the Better Business Bureau and socialcatfish.com:

Gallery Credit: Erin Vogt

Don't get fooled: Here's 25 scam texts I received in just one month

Yes, some of these may be humorous, but some do appear legit and often can fool you.
Spam texts are listed in the same order that they were received.

Gallery Credit: Mike Brant

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

Report a correction 👈

More From Cat Country 107.3