WHEN mum-of-four Jennifer DeStefano picked up the phone last January her blood ran cold as her terrified teen daughter Briana sobbed and screamed for her help“Mum, these bad men have me, help me! Help me!” 15-year-old Briana cried out, her panic-stricken mum’s mind going into overdrive as she desperately tried to think how she could save her daughter.However, it would later transpire that it was all completely fake - a cruel and chilling con.
“Having tested some of the free and paid voice cloning tools online, we found in one instance, that just three seconds of audio was needed to produce a good match.If you’re in love, be a passion-leader, and set a new, shared physical pace At the time Briana was on a ski trip, and Jennifer was on the way to pick her other daughter up from a dance rehearsal when she received the ominous call.“She was crying and sobbing, and saying ‘mum, I messed up’, and then I heard a man telling her to lie down.“But she kept crying, and then suddenly she said ‘these bad men have me, help me, help me.”
“He said if I told anyone, he was going to pump her stomach full of drugs and I’d never see her again and asked for $1m, which they then lowered it to $50,000.“He said they would pick me up in a white van with a bag over my head, and he said if I didn’t have all the money, then we were both going to be dead.
“Here’s your child in harm's way, and you’re pleading for their life. It’s every parent's worst nightmare, and it still makes me emotional just thinking about it now.