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NOPE
Medium reported severity

Indore play school operator reports losing Rs 97,500 after a call in a voice matching a relative's that police preliminarily attribute to AI voice cloning

The New Indian Express (9 January 2026) reported that a woman who runs a small play school in Indore said that on the night of 6 January a call came from an unknown number close to a cousin's number, in a voice that sounded exactly like the cousin's. The caller said a close friend needed urgent cardiac surgery at a private hospital in Indore and asked for money to be forwarded to a QR code. A total of Rs 97,500 was sent in four transactions. None of the money the caller had said was being credited arrived, the cousin denied making the call, and the calling number has been switched off. An Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) in Indore said preliminary investigations strongly suggest AI-based voice modulation technology was used. The Free Press Journal, The420 and Malwa Abhi Tak reported the same call. All four outlets appear to rest on the woman's account and police statements, no audio analysis or AI tool is reported, and the police case against unidentified persons was described as ongoing.

AI system
Unidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)
Occurred
6 Jan 2026
Reported
9 January 2026
Event location
India
What the AI did
Communicated with the person · Depicted or impersonated the person
Reported harm
Financial Loss
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Finance · Everyday life
Evidence
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 1 underlying account
6 claims: 6 reported. 8 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Unidentified AI voice-modulation or voice-cloning tool (preliminary police view, no tool named)

Reported harm

The New Indian Express reports that Rs 97,500 was sent to a QR code in four transactions and describes it as the woman's entire savings, including funds meant for teachers' salaries and loan instalments for the school. The Free Press Journal and The420 give the same amount. The loss is the woman's account as relayed by the outlets. No bank or payment-app record was inspected and no source reports recovery.

What remains unknown

  • No audio analysis, recording or AI tool is reported. The AI attribution is a preliminary police view, and the Free Press Journal states it without the qualifier.
  • The woman last spoke to the cousin about two years before the call, so the reported match between the caller's voice and the cousin's rests on the woman's impression.
  • The relative is a cousin in the New Indian Express, The420 and Malwa Abhi Tak and a brother in the Free Press Journal. Two Hindi technology-desk pieces read but not cited (AajTak and Amar Ujala) also say brother and round the loss to one lakh rupees. The cited sources give Rs 97,500.
  • The sources differ on who operated the payment app and on how the woman found out (checking the account balance or calling the relative's real number). The Free Press Journal names Google Pay and a fake credit message, and the New Indian Express describes message alerts that the woman took as confirmation of credits.
  • An earlier call about the play school roughly three months before was noted by the woman's husband, who wondered whether it was linked. The420 says investigators are probing this. No connection is established.
  • No source reports recovery of the money, an arrest or the identity or location of the caller. The investigation was described as ongoing on 9 January 2026.
  • The Free Press Journal and Malwa Abhi Tak describe the woman as a school teacher and do not mention a play school, while the New Indian Express and The420 say the woman runs a small play school.
  • The four outlets appear to share one source chain, the woman's account and police statements around the police complaint, so they are treated as one reporting chain and no claim is marked corroborated.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: suspected. An Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) in Indore is quoted saying preliminary investigations strongly suggest AI-based voice modulation technology was used. The Free Press Journal states the AI use without that qualifier and Malwa Abhi Tak reports it as a preliminary-investigation finding. No audio analysis, recording or tool is reported, and the woman last spoke to the cousin about two years before the call, so the match between the caller's voice and the cousin's is the woman's impression.

6 claims: 6 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported A woman who runs a play school in Indore reported that on the night of 6 January 2026 a call came from an unknown number close to a cousin's number, in a voice that sounded exactly like the cousin's. The caller said a close friend needed urgent cardiac surgery at a private hospital in Indore.

Causal attribution. The woman's own account as told to a reporter or in a police complaint, repeated by the other outlets. The Free Press Journal calls the relative a brother and Malwa Abhi Tak describes a friend's heart attack, so details differ between outlets. No call record was inspected.

Reported A total of Rs 97,500 was sent to a QR code in four transactions at the caller's direction. The caller had said money was being credited to the woman's payment account first, and message alerts appeared to confirm the credits, but no money from the caller's number had been credited.

Causal attribution. The woman's account relayed by four outlets. No bank or payment-app record was inspected. The sources differ on who operated the payment app and on how the woman found out (checking the account balance or calling the relative's real number). The fabricated-alert statement in The420 is attributed to investigators without naming them.

Reported The New Indian Express and The420 describe the Rs 97,500 as the woman's entire savings, including funds meant for teachers' salaries and loan instalments for the school.

Causal attribution. The composition of the loss is the outlets' description of the woman's account. No accounts or payroll records were inspected, and the outlets do not report any effect on wages or loan payments beyond the description.

Reported The cousin described in the account denied making the call and confirmed that the calling number was not the cousin's. The calling number has been switched off since the call.

Causal attribution. The denial and the switched-off number are stated by the woman and the woman's husband as relayed by the outlets. The cousin is not quoted directly and no telecom record was inspected.

Reported An Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) in Indore said preliminary investigations strongly suggest AI-based voice modulation technology was used. The Free Press Journal states without the qualifier that AI voice modulation was used, and Malwa Abhi Tak reports AI voice cloning as a preliminary-investigation finding. No source reports an analysis of the audio or names an AI tool.

Causal attribution. A preliminary police view relayed by four outlets that share one source chain. The outlet that drops the qualifier adds no evidence. The woman last spoke to the cousin about two years before the call.

  • newindianexpress.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    preliminary investigations strongly suggest the use of AI-based voice modulation technology
  • the420.in(opens in new tab) supports · English
    preliminary findings strongly point to the use of AI-driven voice cloning technology
  • freepressjournal.in(opens in new tab) supports · English
    fraudsters used AI voice modulation to mimic
  • malwaabhitak.com(opens in new tab) supports · Hindi
    शुरुआती जांच में सामने आया है कि ठगों ने एआई वॉयस क्लोनिंग तकनीक का इस्तेमाल कर भाई की आवाज की नकल की थी
Reported The matter was reported to police on 7 January, the day after the call, and a case against unidentified persons was registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act. The outlets describe the investigation as ongoing.

Causal attribution. The outlets' description of the police complaint. The first information report itself was not inspected.

Sources

4 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in full on the live page. The woman appears under a changed name in this source, which is not used here. Applies to s1.

Read in full. Indore staff-reporter piece dated 8 to 9 January 2026 that calls the relative a brother. Applies to s2.

The live page answers HTTP 403 to automated requests. Read through an Internet Archive capture of 2026-01-10 that holds the complete article text. Applies to s3.

Hindi original read directly by the research agent (an AI model). Passages are quoted verbatim in Hindi. English assertions are the agent's own rendering and no human translator reviewed them. Applies to s4.

Event countries: India. Affected-person countries: India. Court countries: Unknown.

The sources place the call, the police complaint and the hospital named by the caller in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, cite the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and state amounts in rupees. The caller's location is unknown and no court proceeding is reported.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-30: Four outlets describe one call reported by a woman who runs a play school in Indore. The outlets place the call on the night of 6 January, and one gives the year 2026. All claims are attributed to the woman's account or to police statements as relayed by the outlets and are treated as one reporting chain. The woman is described by role because the source uses a changed name. The cousin, the hospital doctor and other household members are not named or described beyond role. The AI attribution is a preliminary police view.

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

One person, the woman who runs the play school, is reported to have lost Rs 97,500. The cousin whose voice was reportedly imitated, the hospital doctor named on a QR code, the teachers whose salary funds were affected and the household members present during the call are not reported harmed and are not counted.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Indore play school operator reports losing Rs 97,500 after a call in a voice matching a relative's that police preliminarily attribute to AI voice cloning. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-indore-play-school-operator-reports-rs-97500-loss-after-call-police-suspect-ai-voice-cloning

BibTeX

@misc{2026_indore_play_school_operator_reports_rs_97500_loss_after_call_police_suspect_ai_voice_cloning,
  title = {Indore play school operator reports losing Rs 97,500 after a call in a voice matching a relative's that police preliminarily attribute to AI voice cloning},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-indore-play-school-operator-reports-rs-97500-loss-after-call-police-suspect-ai-voice-cloning}
}

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