A
Florida
woman became one of the many to fall for the increasing AI voice impersonation
scams
. The woman took a hit of $15,000 after she heard her daughter allegedly crying on a call.
Sharon Brightwell received a call from an unknown number last week. The voice on the other end of the line claimed that she had been in a dangerous accident. Brightwell heard her daughter crying while confessing that she had hit a pregnant woman while she was texting and driving.
Sharon Brightwell recalls how she realised that the phone number wasn’t her daughter’s, April Manroe’s. Her suspicion was put at ease when April told her that her phone was in the possession of the cop following the accident. April’s distressed cries on the other end are what sold the tricks to her mother.
“There is nobody that could convince me that it wasn’t her. I know my daughter’s cry. Even though she’s an adult, I know her cry,” Sharon said while being interviewed by
WFLA
. The AI-generated voice sounded so much like her daughter’s that the woman did not doubt that she was being tricked.
After Sharon had heard April’s panicked voice on the call, a man posing as her daughter’s attorney started talking. He claimed that they were in need of $15,000 to post a bond for April. The woman followed the attorney’s instructions by placing the money in a box that was later collected at her house by a man.
A Florida woman is warning others after falling victim to an elaborate AI-powered scheme that used cloned audio of her daughter’s voice to demand thousands of dollars in fake bond money.
https://t.co/Qg5Sabzt6l
— WCIA (@WCIA3)
July 18, 2025
Soon after complying with the instructions, she received another call from the man who claimed to be his daughter’s attorney. This time, the man claimed that the pregnant woman who was involved in the accident had lost her baby due to April’s reckless driving.
The man then told her that the victim’s family would not sue if they were paid $30,000. Brightwell then received a call from her grandson, who assured her that April was safe at home. “I screamed. When I heard her voice, I broke down. She was fine,” Sharon noted.
April, who later started a GoFundMe to help her parents, noted how all logic often tends to “go out the window” when parents hear their children in distress.“To tell you the trauma that my mom and son went through that day makes me nauseous and has made me lose more faith in humanity,” Monroe added.
Not everything is as it seems 🤖
Evolving
#GenerativeAI
enables scammers to create ultra-realistic human avatars using voice, image, and text manipulation.
#ThinkTwice
: Verify identities through multiple channels and be cautious of requests, even from “familiar” faces.
pic.twitter.com/3aErlxQuE6
— INTERPOL (@INTERPOL_HQ)
December 12, 2024
She went on to reveal that her mother had been continuously sobbing on the phone with the fraud people. Manore noted how, regardless of her mother’s panic, the scammers continued “without hesitation or remorse.”
Brightwell later shared how the money that she was tricked out of was supposed to be her and her husband’s retirement funds. The couple who retired recently are now left with nothing.
