Scam Watch · Hanna’s guide to not getting ripped off
By Hanna Deen (The Price Mistake Queen)
Of everything I cover in this series, this is the one I most want you to act on today. Not because it’s the most common scam, but because it’s the cruelest, and because the fix takes five minutes at your kitchen table.
Here’s the short version: scammers can now take a few seconds of someone’s voice, from a video posted online, a voicemail greeting, anything, and use cheap AI software to make that voice say whatever they type. Then they call the person who loves that voice most.
How the call goes
This scheme has been around for decades as the “grandparent scam,” but it targets parents, spouses, siblings, anyone with someone to lose. It used to rely on a muffled line and your imagination. Now the voice can genuinely sound like your grandson, your daughter, your husband.
A hypothetical, because I want you to hear the shape of it. The phone rings late. A panicked voice: “It’s me. I’ve been in an accident. I’m in trouble and I need help, please don’t tell Mom.” Then a second voice takes over, calm and official. A lawyer, a police officer. Bail money, or accident damages, or a fine, and it has to happen tonight. They’ll tell you how to send it: wire transfer, gift cards, sometimes a courier who comes right to your door for cash.
Every beat of that call is engineered:
- The panic keeps you from thinking.
- The “don’t tell anyone” cuts you off from the one phone call that would break the spell.
- The deadline keeps you moving.
- The official second voice answers your doubts before you can voice them.
If you remember one thing about scams generally, remember this: secrecy plus urgency equals scam. Real emergencies survive a ten-minute pause and a second phone call. Fake ones can’t.
The five-minute fix: a family word
Pick one word or short phrase with your family. Something you’d never guess from anyone’s Facebook page: “rhubarb pie,” “Uncle Lou’s canoe,” whatever makes your family laugh. That’s your family word.
The deal everyone agrees to is simple: in any emergency call involving money, whoever is calling gives the word. No word, no money, no exceptions, no matter how real the voice sounds. A cloned voice can beg and cry, but it cannot know your word.
We set ours up over Sunday dinner, my husband, our three kids, and my mother, who stays with us for stretches and is on every scammer’s call list by virtue of having a landline. It took five minutes, the kids treated it like we were founding a secret society, and now the whole household is inoculated. My youngest suggests a new password roughly weekly. The system survives this.
A few tips for picking and keeping the word:
- Don’t use pet names, birthdays, street names, or anything visible on social media.
- Say it, don’t text it around. The fewer places it’s written down, the better.
- Practice once. Actually have someone “make the call” at the table. It feels silly. Do it anyway, because in a real moment of panic, rehearsed beats clever.
No word set yet? Use the callback rule.
If you get one of these calls before your family word exists, here’s the backstop, and it works every time:
Hang up and call the person back on the number you already have for them.
Not the number that just called you. The number in your own contacts, the one you’ve always used. If your grandson is truly in trouble, calling his phone, or his parents, costs you sixty seconds. In almost every one of these scams, the real family member picks up, confused, perfectly fine, usually asleep.
Scammers know this is the kill shot, which is why the script pleads “don’t hang up, there’s no time, don’t call anyone.” A stranger telling you who you’re not allowed to call is a stranger who’s afraid of that call.
And ask a question only the real person could answer, if you stay on the line at all. Not “is this really you?” (they’ll say yes) but “what did we have for dinner at Thanksgiving?” A cloned voice reading a script has no idea.
Do this right now
- Pick your family word today. One phone call or one dinner conversation. Choose something unguessable and slightly ridiculous.
- Agree on the rule out loud: any emergency call asking for money must include the word, and “keep it secret” or “there’s no time” means hang up and call back on a known number.
- Tell the family how the money ends the story: wire transfers, gift cards, and cash couriers are how these calls always finish. Any “emergency” payable in gift cards is fiction, full stop.
If a call like this already got someone
Move quickly and gently. Call the bank immediately if money was wired, and ask for the fraud department; speed matters most in the first hours. Report the call at reportfraud.ftc.gov and at ic3.gov (the FBI’s internet crime center). And please don’t let anyone carry shame over it. These calls are professionally built to beat smart, loving people by aiming straight at the love. The target was never their intelligence.
Share this with someone: Send this to your family group chat with one line: “Let’s pick our word this Sunday.” Five minutes at the table beats the best AI a scammer can rent.
Hanna Deen is The Price Mistake Queen. She can spot a fake price in three seconds, and she’d still be rattled by a fake voice, which is exactly why her family has a word.
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