The secret codewords that scammers hate

Deepfake scams might use your voice, but they don’t know what’s in your head. Five minutes of preparation could save your loved ones from falling for fraud.

“It was the most terror I’ve ever felt,” says Elizabeth Benz, a mother from Buffalo, New York.

In September 2025, she got a phone call. “It was my 16-year-old-son, John,” she says. “He was sobbing, ‘Mom, my friend is dead. He’s dead.'” She panicked, but things were about to get even worse.

A stranger took the phone. Over the course of 20 minutes, the man told her he’d just murdered her son’s friend, and he’d do the same to John if she didn’t meet him with $7,500 (£5,570) in a Walmart parking lot.

“He said, ‘We are going to kill your son,'” Benz says.

Soon she was driving over. But just in time, John’s brother got hold of him. He was at a football game. John wasn’t in danger, and that wasn’t his voice on the phone. It was all an AI deepfake scam. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says.