A new scam that will spread over time is the "Virtual Kidnap Ransom," which makes use of the ease with which it is now possible to easily spoof a phone number and the dumb free information that people post on social media for the entire world to see is gold to a scammer.
The scammer spoofs a phone number, in this case, your mother's, who has shared her vacation photos and experiences on social media sites like Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, among others.
If you don't pay X amount of money, they have your mother and will kill her, the voice on the other end of the phone may claim.
They may even have recordings of your mother pleading or yelling during a purported act of abuse. Some scammers might have artificial intelligence (AI) that can recreate another speech using samples of your mother's voice gathered from social media (samples of around 5-10 minutes of audio will serve very well), so that you can hear your mother's voice (AI voice) begging you to pay.
Texting the victim (in this case, your mother) and either getting them to text back or asking the scammer what is the text I just sent you are two ways to verify that this is a terrible scam attempt. They can read the text you sent back to see if it's real.
Avoid simply hanging up and dialling the number again. If the other person doesn't hang up and can tell you are dialling from the tones they hear, some providers offer delayed cut-off, which allows them to claim to be just answering your outgoing call when in fact it is the same call.
This may well become popular as people will panic after hearing their Mother/Son/Daughter/wife pleading for help. This is a despicable and vicious crime and should be treated as such (minimum 20 year sentence or execution).
