A Florida attorney and Democrat political candidate claims he was the target of a sophisticated AI voice-cloning scam that almost fooled his father into handing over $35,000.
The New York Post reports that Jay Shooster, a 34-year-old attorney running for the Florida House of Representatives as a Democrat, recently found himself at the center of an elaborate AI voice-cloning scam that nearly cost his father $35,000. The scammers used AI to clone Jay’s voice, likely using a 15-second TV campaign ad as source material, and called his father claiming that Jay had been arrested after a serious car accident and needed bail money.
His father, a retired attorney visiting his daughter in New York at the time, was convinced that the hysterical voice on the phone was indeed his son. The impersonator, posing as Jay, pleaded with his father not to tell anyone about the situation. Soon after, a man identifying himself as an attorney called and demanded a $35,000 cash bond to avoid Jay being held in jail for several days.
The scam took an unconventional turn when the supposed attorney instructed Frank to pay the bond via a cryptocurrency machine, raising suspicions. It wasn’t until Jay’s sister and her friend discovered that AI voice-cloning scams were on the rise that he realized something was amiss and ultimately hung up the phone.
Jay speculated that the scammers might have cloned his voice from his recent campaign ad or other online video footage. The sophistication of the scam left him stunned, as he noted that “all it takes is a few seconds of someone’s voice” for the technology to create a convincing impersonation.
Breitbart News has reported extensively on how scammers twist AI for negative purposes:
“Generative artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to mimic the voice of someone you know and communicate with you in real time,” said Jonathan Nelson, director of product management at telephony analytics and software company Hiya Inc. This evolution in technology has eroded the traditional trust that people used to have in phone calls, making every ring a potential risk.
The technological advancements in AI have made it easier for scammers to create interactive voice response (IVR) scams, commonly known as “vishing” (voice phishing). “Generative AI can kind of take what used to be a really specialized spam attack and make it much more commonplace,” Nelson explained. This new method of scamming has become more prevalent due to the widespread sharing of voices online, allowing scammers to harvest the necessary data to craft their deceptive calls.
Read more at the New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
