Kris Sampson was working from home in Missoula, Montana, when her phone rang from her oldest daughter.
Sampson says the caller ID showed his name and picture, and a familiar ringtone. But when he answered, he heard the sound of his daughter crying.
“It was her voice, I know she’s crying,” Sampson tells CNBC Make It. “I thought maybe he was in the car.”
A short time later, a man came on the line, Sampson said. He spoke softly at first, calling her last name and asking if she was the mother of his daughter.
Then he shook his voice. Sampson says he started yelling, threatening and demanding money, warning her not to contact the police or try to find her daughter.
Sampson says he’s seen a case of similar kidnapping scams, where callers pretend to be grieving family members and demand money. But her daughter’s voice sounded so real, she says, she didn’t want to risk being wrong. He then heard his daughter say “mama,” which he said made it hard to believe it was a scam.
“It was the biggest scare I’ve ever had in my life,” Sampson said.
It was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life.
Sampson says she told the caller she was going to send the money, but she kept asking to speak to her daughter as the caller became increasingly angry. The caller wanted money through PayPal, he says, but did not say the amount.
His sister, who was with him at the time, called 911 while the caller hung up intermittently, Sampson said. Sampson used those posts to try to reach family members and her daughter’s workplace in Helena, Montana, about two hours away.
When she couldn’t reach her daughter directly, she says her fear grew. But about 15 to 20 minutes after the first call, Sampson’s daughter was at her workplace after stepping away from her desk. After a while, the calls stopped and did not continue. The caller was not identified, Sampson said.
In the weeks that followed, Sampson says the experience left him shaken. He was very careful at home, checking the locks and paying close attention to his surroundings. He also changed his phone settings.
“I don’t want to hear that ringtone again,” he said.
Sampson says detectives told him there was little the police could do because the calls were difficult to trace. Although Missoula police did not discuss Sampson’s case specifically, they said they have received reports of similar scams involving callers posing as family members and demanding money.
“What has changed in recent years is the level of sophistication,” said Officer Whitney Bennett, spokeswoman for the Missoula Police Department.
Imposter scams were the most commonly reported form of fraud complaints last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Cases jumped by nearly 19% to nearly one million by 2025, and losses rose to more than $3.5 billion.
As fraudsters use tools that can mimic voices and conduct conversations in real time, even picking up the phone poses new risks.
Why answering the phone feels different now
Voice-based scams are changing the way people use the phone, said Ian Bednowitz, general manager of identity and privacy at LifeLock, an identity theft protection company.
For decades, hearing a familiar voice or seeing a familiar number was often enough to show trust. That assumption is crumbling as fraudsters access tools that can imitate voices and spoof caller IDs, Bednowitz said.
“You shouldn’t really be answering your phone,” he says, especially if it’s an unknown or unexpected call. This includes calls that appear to be from banks or the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS usually initiates communications by mail and will not usually call to demand immediate payment or threaten arrest, according to the agency.
Even calls that appear to be from someone you know can be mishandled. In most cases, scammers don’t need much to make the call feel real. If they are pretending to be someone you know, even limited information may be enough.
Short clips released from social media, voicemails or other recordings can be used to create an artificial version of a person’s voice, Bednowitz said. That audio is then paired with the caller’s identity and personal information – names, workplaces, family relationships – to create a call that sounds fast and clear.
Voice conversion tools can now work with very short audio samples — sometimes as little as three seconds — said Michael Bruemmer, vice president of global data breach and consumer protection at Experian.
At the same time, the scale of these scams has changed. Bednowitz says fraud is becoming “industrialized,” as organized networks operate across borders. Many are based in Asia and Africa, he says, and operate as businesses, with operators handling calls, documents and access at scale. In some cases, those workers may become victims, hired under false pretenses and forced to commit fraud, he said.
More than 75% of cybercrimes now result from scams and social engineering tactics like these, according to Bednowitz’s testimony before the House Financial Services subcommittee in September 2025.
Those scams are also growing rapidly. Losses from social media fraud alone have increased eightfold since 2020, reaching nearly $2.1 billion by 2025, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
That number may continue to grow, too. In a 2025 study from Rutgers University, researcher Sanket Badhe developed an AI system that can make scam calls go away, working autonomously. “There are no people involved in the communication loop,” he says.
Cost, performance and latency still limit how large a language modeling technology can be deployed in concepts, he says. But “as the performance of smaller, faster models continues to improve, this will be an imminent threat.”
How to respond to voicemail scams
The first step in avoiding a scam is usually to not answer the phone at all.
“I call it JDA – don’t answer the phone,” says Experian’s Bruemmer.
If the caller claims to be a family member in distress, you can hang up and try to reach them at another number, workplace or trusted contact. Bruemmer also suggests choosing a code word or asking questions that only a family member knows, which can help you quickly confirm that the situation is real.
Even with those protections, some personal information may still be available. “Keep your social media presence low,” says Bruemmer. Avoid posting “Any footage, any public speaking interviews, where you can have a long voice,” as that recording can be sampled to produce fake audio.
Sampson says her family now uses a code name. He says the detective told him the only real defense is awareness, and he’s sharing his story so others don’t fall into the same trap.
“I’m determined to get the word out … so that my poor mother doesn’t have to live through what I lived through,” he said.
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