A Ontario woman is speaking out after being scammed for more than $12,000 after receiving a phone call from someone she thought was her own brother.
“When I picked up the phone it sounded like someone I knew, and he said it’s Mike and he used my brother’s name,” said Angie McCaw of Smith Falls, Ont., who received the phone call one week ago.
McCaw said she is close with her brother Mike, and when she thought he was in trouble she immediately wanted to help.
“It sounded like my brother. I said Mike what’s wrong and he told me that he had been in an accident, he had a broken nose, and he had been found at fault because he hit someone from behind,” said McCaw.
The new scam is believed to use AI voice cloning that can replicate voices you are already familiar with.
McCaw said another person came on the line claiming to be a lawyer who said Mike needed money for bail or he would spend the night in a jail cell.
“I actually went to the bank and withdrew $6,000,” said McCaw.
A courier was sent to her home to pick up the cash, but then later McCaw was contacted again to say Mike was being sued and she needed to send more money to pay for his legal defence.
“Ultimately I made a mistake, and I went into the bank and withdrew another $6,250 from my line of credit,” said McCaw.
After McCaw handed over $12,250 to the courier in total, she decided she should call her brother to see how he was doing and if he was ready to stand trial.
That’s when her brother said he had no idea what she was talking about.
“He said Angie I don’t have a lawyer. There is no car accident. There is nothing that happened and you have been scammed. That is the first time when I realized this is not real,” said McCaw.
In an interview earlier this year with CTV News, cybersecurity expert Jane Arnett with Check Point Software said voice cloning is becoming a popular way for criminals to scam people.
Arnett said criminals need just a small sample of a person’s voice to clone it and they’re then able to impersonate someone and sound just like them.
“What they do by getting 10 seconds of anyone’s voice is they can recreate that voice to sound exactly like the person,” said Arnett.
In order to avoid the family emergency scam it is important to beware of urgent demands for bail or legal fees and be cautious if the caller wants secrecy and says not to tell anyone.
Never allow anyone to come to your home to pick up money and use a code word only your family knows and if you get a strange call are you’re in doubt call the family member directly at a trusted phone number.
McCaw said she has mixed emotions about what happened to her, but she wanted to share her story to warn others.
“At first I felt relief because I knew Mike wasn’t really in trouble, but then I felt really angry because I had been taken advantage of and I knew it,” said McCaw.
