About the VoiceScam Forum and who answers
The VoiceScam Forum is a question and answer community for people dealing with AI voice clone scam calls. It is a section of VoiceScam.com, a plain consumer guide to these scams. The guides explain how the scams work. The forum is where you bring your own call, voicemail or voice note and ask what to make of it.
If a call is happening right now
Do not start by posting. Work through these steps first, then come back.
- Hang up. You do not owe a caller an answer, however upset the voice sounds.
- Call back on a number you already have. Use the contact saved in your phone, or the number on a bank card or a statement. Do not use a number the caller gave you or the one that appears on the screen, because caller ID can be faked.
- Call your bank's fraud line if money, a card or an account is involved. If you already sent a payment, say so in the first sentence.
- Report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov and at ic3.gov. Our guide on how to report a voice scam lists what each agency wants to know.
If someone is in physical danger, call 911 or your local emergency number.
What the forum is for
People come here with three kinds of question.
- Was that call a voice clone? You got a call or message that sounded like a relative, a boss or a bank officer, and something felt wrong.
- What do I do now? You answered, talked, paid or shared a detail, and you want the next steps in a sensible order.
- How do I protect someone? You want to help a parent, grandparent or child before a scammer reaches them.
The twelve sections
Each section has one narrow job, so a question lands where the right people will see it.
- Was That Call a Voice Clone: judging whether a call was a cloned voice, a spoofed number or a real person.
- Suspicious Voicemails and Voice Notes: messages that sound like someone you know.
- Fake Emergency and Kidnap Calls: calls about an arrest, a crash or a kidnapping that demand money fast.
- What to Do After a Scam Call: ordered next steps once you have answered or paid.
- Banks Refunds and Stopping Payments: wires, Zelle, gift cards, crypto and card payments.
- Reporting a Voice Scam: the FTC, FBI IC3, your bank, your carrier and local police.
- Protecting Parents and Grandparents: helping older relatives without frightening them.
- Family Code Words and Call Plans: safe words and call back plans, a discussion section.
- Work Calls and Boss Voice Fraud: urgent payment requests from a boss, client or supplier.
- Voice ID and Account Security: voiceprint logins and phone account takeover.
- Checking a Recording or Audio Clip: what listening and detector tools can and cannot show.
- Scam Stories and Warnings: first hand accounts, a discussion section.
Most sections work as question and answer: one person asks, others answer, and the asker can mark the answer that helped. The code words and scam stories sections are open discussion.
Who answers
Two staff moderators run the forum. Lorna Pettigrew looks after the call, voicemail and family sections, and Gareth Mwangi looks after banking, reporting and workplace fraud. Their posts carry a staff label, so you can tell them apart from other members. Everyone else is a member who has been through something similar or knows the subject. Members are not verified experts, and a member answer is one person's experience, so check anything that involves money against an official source.
How answers use sources
Answers lean on what the agencies and institutions publish: the FTC, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the FCC, the CFPB, and the guidance that banks and phone carriers give their own customers. A good answer says where a claim comes from. If an answer gives a rule with no source, ask for one. Our editorial standards describe how the parent site treats sources.
What the forum cannot do
- It cannot recover money. Only your bank, card issuer or payment service can try to reverse a payment, and speed matters.
- It cannot investigate a scam or find the caller. Reports to the FTC and IC3 are where that work starts.
- It cannot tell for certain that a recording is fake. Listening is unreliable and detector tools give probabilities, not proof. The best check is usually a call back on a known number.
- It cannot take a crime report. See the contact page for where to send one.
Who answers here
Lorna Pettigrew
Moderator: suspicious calls, family protection and code words
Lorna moderates the call, voicemail and family sections. She answers from the FTC and FBI guidance on impostor calls, asks for the details that decide the case (what was said, what was asked for, how it was to be paid) and puts the next safe step first.
Gareth Mwangi
Moderator: banks, reporting and workplace voice fraud
Gareth moderates the banking, reporting and work fraud sections. He keeps the threads on stopping payments, filing reports and business payment checks matched to what banks, the FTC and IC3 publish, and says plainly when a step is time critical.