A voice that sounds exactly like your grandchild can be faked.
Hang up. Then open your contacts and call them yourself.
Not the number on your screen. Not a number they texted you. If they don’t answer, call another relative — silence is not proof the emergency is real.
If the call was genuine, they will still be reachable in five minutes. If it wasn’t, you just stopped it. Nothing is lost by hanging up, and that is the entire decision.
Why the voice is right
Software can copy a person’s voice from a short clip — a video posted online, a voicemail greeting. The Federal Trade Commission describes scammers needing only “a short audio clip of your family member’s voice, which he could get from content posted online, and a voice-cloning program.” The number on your screen can be faked too. So a stranger can sound exactly like your family, calling from what looks like their phone.
The three signs, and they usually come together: it has to happen right now · you’re told to keep it secret (“please don’t tell Mom”) · and payment is unusual — gift cards, a wire, cash in an envelope, cryptocurrency.
Courts, hospitals, and jails do not ask to be paid in gift cards.
If you can’t bring yourself to hang up
The FTC suggests asking something only the real person would know. Use that to buy time to end the call — not to decide whether the call is real. Family details sit on social media and in data breaches, so a right answer is not permission to pay. And their own advice for the secrecy demand is blunt: call someone else in your family, even if the caller told you not to.
If money already went out
Call your bank now, using the number on a recent statement or the back of your card. Say the words “unauthorized electronic transfer” and ask them to open an error-resolution investigation. Then report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
What to do in the first hour after money has gone The deadlines that decide whether you get it back — and the words to use with your bank Print the one-page version Black and white, large type, free to photocopy and hand to anyoneAI Literacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit (EIN 41-5009995), a California nonprofit public benefit corporation founded in 2026 and run by an unpaid volunteer board whose directors serve without pay. Everything we publish is free to read. We run no advertising, we accept no payment from the makers of the tools we write about, and we will never call, text, or email you asking for money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or access to your computer.
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