Traumatized Ariz. mom recalls sick AI kidnapping scam in gripping testimony to Congress
An Arizona mom traumatized by sick scammers who used AI to clone her teen daughter’s voice in a fake kidnapping plot described in gripping testimony to Congress how the heartless con artists threatened to pump her child’s stomach “so full of drugs” if she didn’t pay their ransom.
Jennifer DeStefano, a mother of two from Scottsdale, sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and described the harrowing call that she believed was made by her 15-year-old daughter Brianna on Jan. 20.
The mom is calling for urgent action from lawmakers to address the threats of AI after she said authorities dismissed her complaint.
DeStefano told the members of the subcommittee on human rights and the law that she was picking up her younger daughter, Aubrey, from dance rehearsal when she got a call from an unknown number.
“At the final ring, I chose to answer it, as unknown calls can often be a hospital or a doctor,” she recalled.
“It was Briana sobbing and crying, saying, ‘Mom.’ At first, I thought nothing of it and casually asked her, ‘What happened?’ I had the phone on speaker walking into the parking lot to meet her sister,” she told the panel.
Brianna was supposed to be with her dad training for a ski race.
“‘Mom, I messed up!’” the person she thought was her daughter said through uncontrollable sobs, the traumatized mom recounted. “‘Mom, these bad men have me. Help me! Help me!’”
She described how realistic the clone was because “it wasn’t just her voice, it was her cries, it was her sobs.”
Suddenly, a chilling male voice came on the line and demanded a $1 million ransom.
“A threatening and vulgar man took the call over. ‘Listen here. I have your daughter. You call anybody, you call the police, I’m gonna pump her stomach so full of drugs. I’m gonna have my way with her. I’m gonna drop her in Mexico. You’ll never see your daughter again,'” an emotional DeStefano recalled, fighting back tears.
“It started at $1 million. It was reduced to $50,000 because that wasn’t possible. I asked him for wiring instructions,” she said, adding that he refused and demanded that she get inside a van with a bag over her head with the cash in hand.
Another mom soon told her that she had reached her husband, who found Brianna “resting safely in bed.”
“She came to me and told me that Brianna was safe but I did not believe her because I had just spoken to my daughter and I was very sure of her voice and I was very sure of her cries,” she said.
“I will never be able to shake that voice and the desperate cries for help out of my mind,” she added.
“It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to hear their child pleading in fear and pain, knowing that they are being harmed and are helpless.”
DeStefano said she later found out that artificial intelligence scams are common.
“They can use not just the voice, but the inflection, the emotion. I still didn’t believe it, because I heard — I talked to my daughter. It was my daughter,” she said.
When the anguished mom reported the cruel deepfake scam to police, she said they called it a “prank call” and told her nothing could be done since no kidnapping had taken place and no money had been sent.
Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said he held the meeting so the Senate “could investigate and understand the nature of the threats from the abuse of the use of artificial intelligence.”
He said lawmakers have “identified some important areas where there may be a need for new legislation, or to press federal law enforcement agencies to better protect families in Georgia and across the country from these threats.”
Several experts also addressed the Senate panel Tuesday, including Aleksander Madry, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning.
“The newest wave of generative AI is poised to fundamentally transform our collective sense-making,” Madry said, according to Courthouse News.
“I think no matter what happens, the public needs to understand how to interact with AI systems, and to be on the lookout for when they are actually interacting with AI in the first place. We do not want to learn this the hard way,” he said.
Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the DC-based Center for Democracy and Technology, said generative AI models could also be used to spread disinformation during elections.
“In past elections, operatives used robocalls and texts to spread deceptive information,” Givens said. “But now, bad actors can easily use AI to exponentially grow and personalize voter suppression or other targeting.”
DeStefano called for immediate action before the abuse of AI becomes even greater.
“My greatest fear is how is that going to manifest into other areas like human trafficking and abduction of children,” he said. “Because luckily, I was an adult who had other adults around me. But what if that was a child? ‘Hey, it’s Mom. Come meet me here.’ That’s my greatest fear.”
The mom warned that if this threat from AI is “left uncontrolled, unregulated and unprotected,” it will “rewrite our understanding and perception of what is — and what is not — truth.”
