TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — It’s a mother’s worst nightmare: hearing your daughter’s crying voice on the other end of the phone saying something terrible happened.

“There is nobody that could convince me that is was not, I know my daughters cry,” Sharon Brightwell said. “Even though she’s an adult, I know her cry.”

Brightwell said the woman on the line claimed she’d been in a crash that she had hit a pregnant driver while texting.

A person posing as a lawyer jumped on, saying bail would be $15,000 in cash.

So she gave it to them, but later got a call from a family friend.

“I screamed,” Brightwell said. “I literally screamed and cried.”

“I said, ‘Oh, dear Lord,'” she continued. “Then she had my daughter on three-way and I hear my daughter’s voice.”

“She says, ‘Mom,'” Brightwell recalled. “I go, ‘April, are you okay?'”

“She said, ‘I am, Mom. I’m still at work,'” she concluded.

It turns out the entire thing was a lie, likely powered by artificial intelligence.

“One thing AI can do much, much faster than we can is learn the patterns of voices,” Tech consultant Joey De Villa said.

De Villa explained, AI has the capabilities to mimic not only your voice, but video too.

So, how can you spot the red flags?

“Despite the fact that they’re using AI, all of it is a high-tech veneer on top of classic con artist schemes,” he explained. “The most important one that they use, the one that works so well in their favor, is urgency.”

While keeping an eye out for those red flags, De Villa said, there are preventative measures you can put in place to better protect you and your family.

“Come up with passphrases, something that only you and maybe you’re family would know, like some kind of phrase that you can say to really prove it’s you,” he explained. “Failing that, maybe some kind of inside family story or joke.”