California tech investor hit by sophisticated phone scam

Casado’s father received a call from someone claiming to be — and sounding just like — Casado, who said he was “in jail after a car accident and needed $10k bail,” Casado wrote in a post on X, formerly called Twitter. “He was headed to the bank but decided to call me just in case (lucky I picked up, I’m in Japan).”

This type of tech-enabled phone scam was the subject of a hearing before the Senate Aging Committee last Thursday. In this type of con, scammers generate a clone of someone’s voice by feeding recordings from phishing phone calls or public social media videos into an artificial intelligence-based system. They can then use those AI clones to call your loved ones, impersonating you, to ask for something (often financial assistance).

Several voice cloning tools are readily available online. The maker of one such tool, Lovo, says it uses an algorithm to break voice recordings into tiny chunks of audio. Those chunks are used to create a model that can turn user-inputted text into a new audio clip using a voice that Lovo says will sound nearly identical to the original speaker’s.

Improvements in AI tech have lowered the bar for creating this kind of synthetic audio. Microsoft researchers announced in January that they had successfully mimicked speech using a three-second voice recording, though that specific tool is not available to the public. Speechify, which does offer such voice clones to the public, says it can do so using a 30-second audio clip.

Now that the tech is accessible and improving, the potential for malfeasance has caught the attention of the federal government. “Voice clones can mimic the voice of a loved one, and can easily dupe consumers and businesses into giving away valuable personal information,” Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said at Thursday’s hearing. 

Several parents spoke at the hearing, sharing stories very similar to Casado’s: Each of them received calls from what sounded like their children, pleading for immediate help to post bail. On Friday, the FBI put out a Public Service Announcement, warning that the agency had received more than 195 complaints regarding such “grandparent scams,” with at least $1.9 million taken from victims. 

The FBI recommends that people limit the personally identifiable information they post on social media and dating websites, and cautions consumers never to send money to an unknown person who reached out online or over the phone.

“If you receive an unsolicited or suspicious call from someone claiming to be a family member and urgently requesting money, hang up,” the FBI wrote. “Verify the story with your family member by calling them directly. If you cannot reach them, call someone else in your family, even if scammers told you to keep it secret.”

Hear of anything happening at a Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.