AI-powered scam calls are getting more convincing—and more common: 'It was her voice, I know her scared cry'

Kris Sampson was working from home in Missoula, Montana, when her phone lit up with a call that appeared to come from her adult daughter.

Sampson says the caller ID showed her name and photo, and the familiar ringtone sounded. But when she answered, she heard what sounded like her daughter crying.

"It was her voice, I know her scared cry," Sampson tells CNBC Make It. "I thought maybe she'd been in a car wreck."

Moments later, a man came on the line, Sampson says. He spoke calmly at first, using her first name and asking if she was her daughter's mother.

Then his tone shifted. Sampson says he began shouting, making threats and demanding money, warning her not to contact the police or try to reach her daughter.

Sampson says she had seen a news story about similar kidnapping scams, in which callers impersonate family members in distress and demand money. But her daughter's voice sounded so real, she says, she didn't want to risk being wrong. Then she heard her daughter say "mom," which she says made it harder to believe it was a scam.

"It was the most afraid I've ever experienced in my life," Sampson says.

It was the most afraid I've ever experienced in my life.Kris Sampson

Sampson says she told the caller that she would send money, but kept asking to speak to her daughter as the caller grew more aggressive. The caller demanded money through PayPal, she says, but never specified an amount.

Her sister, who was with her at the time, called 911 while the caller periodically hung up and called back, Sampson says. Sampson used those gaps to try to reach family members and her daughter's workplace in Helena, Montana, about two hours away.

When she couldn't reach her daughter directly, she says her panic intensified. But about 15 to 20 minutes after the first call, Sampson's daughter was located at her workplace after briefly stepping away from her desk. Shortly after, the calls stopped and did not resume. The caller was never identified, Sampson says.

In the weeks that followed, Sampson says the experience left her shaken. She became more cautious at home, double-checking locks and paying closer attention to her surroundings. She also changed her phone settings.

"I don't ever want to hear that ringtone again," she says.

Sampson says detectives told her there was little police could do because the calls were difficult to trace. While police in Missoula did not discuss Sampson's situation specifically, they say they have received reports of similar scams involving callers impersonating family members and demanding money.

"What has evolved in recent years is the level of sophistication," says Officer Whitney Bennett, a spokesperson for the Missoula Police Department.

Imposter scams were the most reported type of fraud complaint last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Cases jumped about 19% to roughly 1 million in 2025, while losses have climbed to more than $3.5 billion.

As scammers adopt tools that can mimic voices and carry out conversations in real time, even picking up the phone carries new risks.

Why answering the phone feels different now

Voice-based scams are changing how people use the phone, says Ian Bednowitz, general manager of identity and privacy at LifeLock, an identity theft protection company.

For decades, hearing a familiar voice or seeing a known number was often enough to signal trust. That assumption is breaking down as scammers gain access to tools that can mimic voices and spoof caller IDs, Bednowitz says.

"You shouldn't be really answering your phone," especially if it's an unknown or unexpected call, he says. This includes calls that appear to come from banks or the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS typically initiates contact through mail and generally will not call to demand immediate payment or threaten arrest, according to the agency.

Even calls that appear to come from someone you know can be spoofed. In most cases, scammers don't need much to make a call feel real. When they're impersonating someone you know, even limited information can be enough.

Short clips pulled from social media, voicemails or other recordings can be used to generate a synthetic version of someone's voice, says Bednowitz. That audio is then paired with spoofed caller ID and personal details — names, workplaces, family relationships — to create a call that feels immediate and specific.

Voice-cloning tools can now work with very short audio samples — sometimes as little as three seconds — says Michael Bruemmer, vice president of global data breach and consumer protection at Experian.

At the same time, the scale of these scams has changed. Bednowitz says fraud is becoming "industrialized," with organized networks running coordinated operations across borders. Many are based in Asia and Africa, he says, and operate like businesses, with workers handling calls, scripts and outreach at scale. In some cases, those workers may themselves be victims, recruited under false pretenses and forced to carry out scams, he says.

More than 75% of cybercrime now stems from scams and social engineering tactics like these, according to Bednowitz's testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee in September 2025.

Those scams are also growing quickly. Losses to social media scams alone have increased eightfold since 2020, reaching about $2.1 billion in 2025, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

That number might continue to grow, too. In a 2025 study from Rutgers University, researcher Sanket Badhe built an AI system capable of carrying out scam phone calls end to end, operating autonomously. "There were no humans involved in the interaction loop," he says.

Cost, performance and latency still limit how widely large language model technology can be deployed in scams, he says. But "as the performance of smaller, faster models continues to improve, this will become an imminent threat."

How to respond to voice scams

The first step in avoiding a scam is often not answering the call at all.

"I call it JDA — just don't answer the phone," says Experian's Bruemmer.

If a caller claims to be a family member in distress, you can hang up and try to reach them through another number, a workplace or a trusted contact. Bruemmer also suggests choosing a code word or asking questions only a family member would know, which can help you quickly confirm whether a situation is real.

Even with those safeguards, some personal information may already be available. "Keep your social media presence down," Bruemmer says. Avoid posting "any pictures, any public speaking engagements, where you can have a long voice," since those recordings can be sampled to generate fake audio.

Sampson says her family now uses a code word. She says a detective told her the only real defense is awareness, and she's sharing her story so others don't fall for the same kind of call.

"I am determined to get the word out … so that some poor mother doesn't have to live through what I lived through," she says.

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