Canadian Couple Got Scammed For $21,000 By AI-Generative Call Pretending To Be Their Son

A very old couple in Canada is the recent victim of the growing AI scams these days. The couple nearly lost thousands of dollars to scammers after they received a fake AI phone call from someone that sounded just like their grandson who pleaded for bail money to get him out of jail.

Ruth Card, 73, and her husband Greg, 75, were in a state of shock after getting the phone call and as every parent, they were ready to give their son the money he needed to get out of jail. 

Because their grandson had asked for more money and they were at their daily limit, the elderly couple went to a second bank branch to withdraw more money. But that was where their desperate rush to help out Brandon quickly ended.

That branch’s bank manager had actually experienced the same thing with another patron. The same call and request for money. And even though the voice was incredibly similar to Brandon, it turned out the manager was on the money.

He saved Ruth and Greg from a costly mistake.  Ruth told to The Washington Post:

“We were sucked in. We were convinced that we were talking to Brandon.”

Another elderly US couple received a similarly disturbing call, this time from a lawyer who said their son, Perkin, had been arrested and needed money for legal fees after he killed an American diplomat in a car crash.

They even spoke to their son – or so they thought – and while they had some doubts, it was convincing enough to force their hand and send $21,000.

“The money’s gone. There’s no insurance. There’s no getting it back. It’s gone,” Perkin told The Washington Post.

The rise of more powerful AI tools is coinciding with a rise in scams involving people impersonating other people. The most commonly reported scam last year was imposter scams, the Federal Trade Commission found. The FTC saw fraud reports from 2.4 million people in 2022, which was lower than in 2021. However, the amount of money lost was higher, with $8.8 billion reported lost.

That’s all AI voice-generating software needs these days as it’s advanced enough to replicate voices based on just a few small snippets. Once it has heard a voice, it will find similar voices in online databases to predict speech patterns and create an eerily familiar voice to the one it’s mimicking. 

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