Florida Woman Scammed Out of $15,000 After AI Clones Daughter’s Voice in Fake Emergency Call

A woman in Florida was defrauded of $15,000 from her retirement savings after scammers used artificial intelligence to mimic her daughter’s voice in a chilling phone scam.

Sharon Brightwell, of Hillsborough County, received a phone call last Wednesday from someone who sounded exactly like her adult daughter, April Monroe.

In the call, the AI-generated voice, sobbing and panicked, claimed she had caused a car accident while texting and driving, injuring a heavily pregnant woman.

Though the number didn’t match Monroe’s, the voice explained that police had confiscated her phone after the crash. Brightwell was convinced it was her daughter. “There is nobody that could convince me that it wasn’t her. I know my daughter’s cry,” she told WFLA.

A man then took over the call, claiming to be an attorney representing Monroe. He told Brightwell she needed to send $15,000 for bail and advised her not to disclose the purpose of the withdrawal to the bank, warning it could harm Monroe’s credit. She followed the instructions, placing the money in a box that was picked up by a courier at her home.

Soon after, Brightwell received another call claiming the pregnant woman’s baby had died, and that the victim’s “Christian people” family would refrain from suing if another $30,000 was paid.

The scam unraveled when Brightwell’s grandson called, assuring her that Monroe was fine and had not been in any accident. Hearing her real daughter’s voice again, Brightwell broke down in relief.

Monroe later shared the ordeal in a GoFundMe post to help her parents recover the stolen money. “After you hear your child in distress, all logic is out the window,” she wrote. “To tell you the trauma that my mom and son went through that day makes me nauseous… Evil is too nice a word for the kind of people that can do this.”

The family believes the scammers used videos from Monroe’s Facebook and Snapchat accounts to create the voice clone, highlighting the growing risks of AI-driven fraud.