Scammers Reportedly Used AI-Cloned Daughter's Voice to Defraud Bay Area Mother in Fake Kidnapping Call

May 24, 2026

Deborah Del Mastro of Martinez, California, allegedly transferred $5,400 to Mexico following a fraudulent claim that her daughter Sarah had been kidnapped. The scammers reportedly employed AI to simulate Sarah's distressed voice during a five-hour call, exerting pressure on Del Mastro to send funds. Upon contacting her daughter and confirming her safety, the Martinez police initiated an investigation.

Contribute to our mission at HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM by exploring new insights into AI incident management—JOIN US—to help us safeguard responsible AI development.

Alleged deployer

scammers, fake-kidnapping-scammers

Alleged developer

deepfake-technology-developers, voice-cloning-technology-developers

Alleged harmed parties

deborah-del-mastro, daughter-of-deborah-del-mastro, epistemic-integrity, victims-of-impersonation-scams, victims-of-fake-kidnapping-scammers

AI governance case studies

For forensic AI governance failure analysis (TAIMScore™ case studies), browse Human Signal’s Failure Files™.

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.