DeepfakeHigh
Purported AI-Generated Voice Reportedly Impersonated Washington Man's Daughter in $13,000 Extortion Scam
- Occurred
- Mar 23, 2026
- Published
- May 8, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A man in Washington state, Mark A. Young, reportedly wired $13,000 after scammers used a purportedly AI-generated copy of his daughter's voice to convince him she had been kidnapped after a staged car-crash story. The caller allegedly kept him on the phone for about 30 hours, directed him to banks and money-transfer locations, and sought another $17,000 before a Pullman bank manager and police confirmed his daughter was safe.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- Scammers
Harmed parties
- Mark A. Young
- General public
- Daughter of Mark A. Young
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI voice cloning used in extortion scam causing significant financial loss.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8