Papa, I’m in trouble. I was in a car accident. I’m in trouble: I hit a pregnant woman and am in the hospital. Help me, I don’t know what’s going to happen. You need to help me!
Late in the evening of April 16th, a 73 year old man, Alexander, picked up his phone to hear the voice of his daughter, Alisa sobbing, panicking. Alisa had been staying with him and his wife for five months but had just left to return home in America the day before. She was in deep trouble. She was in a car accident and had hit a pregnant woman. She was in the hospital and needed surgeries. Many surgeries. She was going to be reported to the Russian Federation. She needed his help. She needed his money.
Alexander is a Soviet emigre to Israel and, having a deep-seated distrust of banks, never stored his money with them. He and his wife, Marina, had $50,000 in dollars and shekels stored in the house. Within four hours of receiving that call, he had handed it all over to a stranger in a cab.
Except, Alexander did not receive a call from his daughter. She was back in New York felling ill and jet lagged, but otherwise perfectly fine. Instead, a sophisticated operation, probably Russian, had used artificial intelligence to clone Alisa’s voice. Just four hours before the scam began Alisa had actually called her father, sobbing, worried she had made the wrong decision by returning to New York. That was the last her father heard from her before the scam. This is also the call that was probably hijacked and used to clone Alisa’s voice.
When Alexander received the call, he was already primed to expect his daughter was in distress. He had already been worrying about her well-being. And, although he noticed that something was off: neither “Alisa” nor any of the many people who called in the four hours afterwards mentioned where she was. Nonetheless, it was her voice. What was he supposed to do?
In this special episode of Inheritance, we learn what happened and explore how the scam worked. This podcast is of a significantly higher production value than usual in order to bring you into Alisa’s world, and better communicate how effective voice clones can be. I’m very proud of how it turned out and hope that it will be as entertaining as it is informational.
This episode is also an appeal. Alisa is a dear friend of mine and a genuinely kind person. She always takes it on herself to bring others into the fold, to build community, to make people feel welcome. Despite her best efforts, she always puts others’ needs before her own. She is also not the sort of person to ask for help. So, when she confided in me what had happened, I immediately donated and volunteered to produce this episode in an effort to raise awareness as well as funds to help offset her parents’ loss.
If you enjoy this episode, please consider donating a few dollars (or many) to her GoFundMe. Whether you contribute or not, please, have a conversation with your family about this scam and take measures to protect yourselves.
Thank you,
— Nika Scothorne
