Last month I wrote about how my wife and I were targeted by scammers who attempted to convince us that our daughter was under arrest and facing a long weekend in jail unless we could come up with $15,000 to bail her out. Fortunately, we came to our senses before being taken in by these lowlifes. I still wonder how we got picked as potential marks.
There are lots of different scams out there, including this “bail money” scam. The common factor in all of them is a story constructed to place you in a reactive state, rather than using your brain to ask questions which will cause their story to unravel. The best way to do that is to create a story in which a loved one is in some sort of trouble. In our case, the story was that our daughter has been arrested for causing an automobile accident. Almost every parent hearing that would immediately start thinking about how to help their child.
One of the additional factors for us was that my wife believed she heard our daughter’s voice. I’m not sure how this was accomplished, although technology exists to take a brief snippet of someone speaking. Eleven Labs (elevenlabs.io) advertises “AI Voice Cloning,” as does Resemble AI (resemble.ai). You can try both of these services for free, and there are YouTube videos which describe how to do it in detail. My assumption is that something like my daughter’s voice mail message could have been used to clone her voice closely enough to fool her own mother. But I don’t know for sure.
Most importantly, a good scammer tells a convincing story. In our case, our daughter had rear-ended a pregnant woman, who had complained of neck pains and was now enroute to a hospital. Hearing something like that sets your heart racing. Additionally, we spoke to one scammer pretending to be a police officer (with an actual case number!) and were then called back by a different person claiming to be a public defender, adding to the impression that the situation was real. The “public defender” wanted to help us avoid our daughter spending the long Fourth of July holiday in jail. How nice of them to help us!
All of this is done to get you invested in the story and react to the circumstances, rather than asking questions to verify the truth of the situation (or lack thereof). The key, of course, is to think, rather than react. Sadly, this is easier said than done. Scammers create a sense of urgency to keep you off-balance. Your best bet is to slow the process down by asking questions.
There is a raft of questions we could have asked, starting by asking the police officer (who gave us his name and “badge number”) which police service he worked for, so that we could verify his identity with that agency. This would have caused the story to unravel pretty quickly. So, if you get a phone call from someone who says they are a police officer, start by asking for their full name, badge number and who they work for. Asking for information of this sort may cause the scammer to simply hang up.
Another question we could have asked which car our daughter was driving. She only owns one, but the scammers probably don’t know that, and they probably don’t know the type of car she actually owns.
Even with AI voice cloning, it’s very unlikely (at present, at least) that the scammer will let you just talk to the victim and ask questions. That’s the mistake our scammer made, and when my wife asked our daughter for the name of her dog, the scammer hung up.
In searching for information online about this type of scam, I came across this pdf (tinyurl.com/244clrkb) from the Vancouver police department about bail money scams. Its recommendation: If you get a call from a loved one asking for bail money, hang up. It’s not bad advice, although I fear that many people find it hard to turn away from a caller purporting to be someone they know.
Remember that these are people you don’t really know (even if they claim to be an official-sounding police officer or a helpful public defender). You would be suspicious if someone without a good story called you up asking for money. Don’t be taken in by a story that is designed to break down your resistance to it by using the urgent plight of a loved one.
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This column starts my 26th year of writing Tech Talk. Having survived cancer this past year, I wanted to express my gratitude to all of you who take the time to read my column. I hope that it is at least informative, and that you occasionally find it useful as well. Best wishes to you all for 2026.
