{"id":3685,"date":"2026-07-16T10:03:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T10:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=3685"},"modified":"2026-07-16T10:03:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T10:03:25","slug":"brothers-launch-ai-scam-protection-app-after-mother-targeted-by-voice-cloning-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=3685","title":{"rendered":"Brothers launch AI scam-protection app after mother targeted by voice-cloning fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 The call sounded exactly like their sister: \u201cMom, I need help. Please do what they say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more AI in Arizona politics: How to spot AI-generated campaign ads<\/a><\/p>\n

Except it wasn\u2019t Patrick and Ryan Coughlin\u2019s sister. It was a scammer using an AI voice clone to stage a fake kidnapping, trying to trick their mother into sending money, and it inspired the two brothers to turn their experience into a cybersecurity company.<\/p>\n

The Coughlins are the co-founders of Savi Security, which launched the Savi app for iOS and Android this month after a $7 million seed round led by Acrew Capital. The brothers appeared on Generation AI<\/i> this week to discuss the company and the scam that started it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Everything about that call was fake\u2019<\/h3>\n

Patrick Coughlin said the incident occurred a little over two years ago, when his mother received a call that appeared to come from his sister, Courtney.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe picked up the phone and she heard my sister\u2019s voice, or what sounded like my sister\u2019s voice,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd she was saying, \u2018Mom, I need help. Please do what they say.\u2019 And then a man came on the line and said, \u2018We\u2019ve got your daughter at the local Walmart in Olathe, Kansas, and we\u2019re going to kill her if you don\u2019t PayPal us some money right away.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, his mother believed her daughter was in danger. In reality, scammers had cloned the sister\u2019s voice and spoofed her phone number.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything about that call was fake,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cThe voice was fake. They had spoofed my sister\u2019s number. And yet the emotions she felt were real, and the trauma that she felt was very real.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story echoes one of the first AI voice-cloning scams to make national headlines: in 2023, a Scottsdale mother named Jennifer DeSefano testified that scammers used AI to mimic her daughter\u2019s voice in a fake kidnapping call, just months after the release of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

From family incident to startup<\/h3>\n

Ryan Coughlin said the family began researching voice-cloning scams immediately. About a year later, the brothers started building the company.<\/p>\n

Both came to the problem from industry: Patrick, Savi\u2019s CEO, previously worked in enterprise cybersecurity at Splunk, Cisco and Booz Allen Hamilton. Ryan built consumer AI products at Apple and Spotify.<\/p>\n

Patrick said the average American now receives at least one scam call, text or email every day, and described digital fraud as the fastest-growing crime facing consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cScammers are now using AI, which is essentially the perfect weapon,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cThe same power that can help talk like us and create pixel-perfect images and sound like us can also be used to deceive us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Results of Nolan Wells\u2019 death investigation to be turned over to grand jury, Crump says<\/a><\/p>\n

He said most cybersecurity innovation has focused on governments and large companies, leaving a gap for consumers. \u201cWe need to build a bigger tent for cybersecurity tools, make these tools easier to use and more approachable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

What the app does<\/h3>\n

Scamwise, the company\u2019s free tool, launched as a website in March and requires no registration. Users can submit screenshots of text messages, forwarded emails or photos of physical mail, such as suspicious jury-duty notices and Medicare bills, and receive an assessment and recommended next steps. <\/p>\n

Ryan said the tool analyzes behavioral cues, such as payment demands, and checks details like how recently a linked domain was created.<\/p>\n

The tool has processed more than 100,000 submissions since March, Patrick said. The company said in its launch announcement that more than half of the messages reviewed were identified as scams.<\/p>\n

Paid features include text message protection, which routes suspected scam texts to junk before they reach the inbox, and voicemail screening, which flags suspicious messages from unknown callers. During testing by Generation AI<\/i>, the app flagged a staged threatening voicemail and moved it out of the main inbox.<\/p>\n

A live call monitoring feature, called On Call, lets users add Savi to a call in progress. The company says it listens for scam patterns and alerts the user in real time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you\u2019re in the moment and you want to add a line and get a third party on that call with you,\u201d Ryan said, \u201cso we can listen in and say, hey, we think this is suspicious. It\u2019s probably time to hang up.\u201d<\/p>\n

A single plan costs $7.99 per month or $62.99 per year. One plan covers an entire family with no cap on members. <\/p>\n

The company said a proactive call-screening feature that blocks scam calls before the phone rings is slated for fall 2026.<\/p>\n

See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <\/i>Please click here to report it<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <\/i>it to us here<\/i> with a brief description.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read more Santa Rita Park grand reopening pushed back due to equipment shipping delay<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Users can submit screenshots of text messages, forwarded emails or photos of physical mail and receive an assessment and recommended next steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nBrothers launch AI scam-protection app after mother targeted by voice-cloning fraud - Tucson Moving Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tucsonmovingreport.com\/?p=3685\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brothers launch AI scam-protection app after mother targeted by voice-cloning fraud - 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