AI is making scammers more efficient

0:00 The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must-listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific Time on K4HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now, here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.

0:49 Good morning, everybody. My name is Brian Watson, and I have the pleasure of filling in for Joyce today. Welcome to Let's Talk About Scams. Every Tuesday morning, we talk about a new scam topic, not to scare you, but to prepare you. And today we are talking about artificial intelligence. The title of today's show is AI is making scammers more efficient. I do a lot of presentations with Rose. I've done about a hundred of them now. And at the end, if there's time, I open it up for questions. And one of the questions that I get quite often is what about AI? And I try to answer it as best as possible. You know, I'm not a tech expert.

1:37 We have some tech experts on our advisory committee. So when I have questions, I like to rely on them. But we're just going to keep this kind of surface level, and I'm going to cover three topics today. And the reason I thought about this topic was AI has been in the news lately. It was in the news cycle a couple weeks ago, two or three weeks ago, and it seemed like every story was about what is the government going to do to combat AI? And from taking over the world, I mean, we saw the movie, The Terminator and Skynet and all that scary stuff. So I actually had a radio reporter out of Phoenix reach out to me and ask to do a story about AI.

2:20 I was a little nervous at first. I reached out to my friend, Bill, who's on our advisory committee. And thank you, Bill, for going through what I had in making some changes and adding a few other things. So that's why we have an advisory committee because Joyce and I and others on our board, we don't know everything, but we know where to get good help. That's what, that's what I always talk about. Joyce, Joyce's superpower is finding really talented people and having her join the cause. Um, so the thing with, with, um, thing to remember about scammers is, um, by nature, they don't follow laws or rules.

3:03 So let's say the government did institute some new policies with AI and how it was used. The scammers aren't going to use it. You know, think about the do not call registries. You know, those were like 10, 20 years ago. They still go on today. And you get a phone call and say, take me off your list. Well, honest and ethical companies will do that. They will take you off their list. But people who are committing crimes or unethical companies will not. So that just by nature, they will not comply with any laws. So it's wishful thinking to say, we're going to put these laws in place and scammers are going to follow them. Now, AI did not invent, really didn't invent new scams, but AI makes the existing scams faster, cheaper, and more convincing. So it's like Scams on steroids. And yes, that's scary. And I'm hopefully I'm not putting panic in anybody's minds this morning, but AI is making scammers much more efficient. So let's talk about the three ways. So the number one is phishing emails. We talk about phishing emails all the time.

4:19 These are emails meant to trick you into thinking the sender is a company that you recognize, a government agency. a financial institution, and they try to get you to react. This is Walmart. We're confirming the $ 500 purchase of this PlayStation you bought, and they want you to call and react. Or you have a virus on your computer or anything where they want you to react. So I give an example, and I've actually used this in my class that I teach at the university. is I have a phishing email from 2016. It's what we would call like a Nigerian email where someone has some money and they want to share it with you. And the one I have from 2016 is just this really poorly written phishing Nigerian email, whatever you want to call it. I mean, it's probably one of the worst ones I've ever seen. It's just got all kinds of weird stuff that someone... born or living in the United States would absolutely never use. It's actually comical. And I use it for that reason. Well, earlier this year, I copied that phishing email and I ran it through chat GPT and just had it cleaned up.

5:46 And it was staggering how much better it was. It went from a poorly written, easy to recognize scam to, an email that was actually really quite believable. The results were absolutely amazing. So from my point of view, someone in the fraud prevention community, I will argue the biggest use of AI is cleaning up poorly written phishing emails and texts, because now you could be a criminal living halfway around the world. You don't even speak English, but you could type up a scam email and run it through AI and make it sound like it was written by a native born English speaker, which is actually very, very scary. And then, you know, the messages, they can tweak it. They can tweak the tone. They can make it more serious, make it more funny, make it more businesslike, any language. And then they can also get public data that's out there. There's a lot of open source information on us. And they can put that information in there.

6:53 So I'll argue, even though I'm going to present two more items today, the biggest threat of artificial intelligence is cleaning up these poorly written phishing emails. Because before we could, one of our clues was read the email carefully, look for clues, and then you know it's a scam. It's getting harder and harder now. I'm sorry, folks. And I get phishing emails too. And I have to take my time and make sure I have to ask myself, is this a scam? All right. Number two, this is the next one I want to talk about today with AI, um, scammers can use bots to send millions of wrong text numbers, 24 seven. Um, so criminals like to send text messages with, to the wrong numbers on purpose. You know, they are relying on our kindness to respond and, um, maybe start an ongoing online conversation. I mean, there are all kinds of numerous variations of this scheme. You know, you might get a text saying, hey, this is my new number.

8:03 Why don't you give me a call? And you're like, who is this? And then it starts going back and forth. And before you know it, you're texting with this person every day. You might get a text message with a photo, like a bottle of wine. And the question at the bottom says, did you get the bottle of wine I sent you? And it's from a number that's not in your contact list. Well, what's the normal human reaction? Oh, I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. Well, then the scammer will text back, oh, I'm so sorry. I really checked the number carefully. I thought I put it on my phone right. Let me make this up to you. Where do you live? Let me send you a gift certificate, or I'll send you a real bottle of wine, or I'll take you out to coffee. And that's the other variation, super common. You get a text message. Hi, Brian. Are we still up for coffee tomorrow morning? Or actually, let's not use Brian. Let's use Bob, because Brian's my name. Hi, Bob.

9:01 Are we still on for coffee tomorrow morning? And you're like, sorry, not Bob. And then they'll go back and forth. If you watch previous episodes of Let's Talk About Scams, earlier this year I shared about a text message I received from an area code, a phone number with a Connecticut area code. The phone number was not in my contact list. And All it was was a picture of a cute little dog. It was a Samoyed puppy. And I knew immediately it was a scam. If I wanted to be safe, I just would have deleted it because we have no obligation to respond to random texts. But I knew what it was and I knew it would make a good radio show and I knew it would make a great article and a good story to tell when I do presentations.

9:52 But I basically responded back I went back and forth and I knew what it was. It was a wrong number text with the eventual pretext where they would eventually mention the fact that this person that you're interacting with online invests in cryptocurrency. That's the biggest thing I'm seeing right now. It is just nonstop. These scammers are out there trying to engage with people and after a certain amount of time, introduce the idea of investing in cryptocurrency. Just this month, I met somebody who lost five figures in a crypto investment scheme. And it's a smart person.

10:41 It's incredible. The scammers are that good. So in the past, getting back on the AI thing, you know, the scammers had to type out these texts, you know, and it was very labor intensive. And, you know, they could do some cutting and pasting, but it was very labor intensive. But now with these AI bots and a bot is like a robot. It's just a program. It just they can send out these these texts in max volume. Now, if a potential victim bites, meaning. respond back saying hey you have the wrong number you know the scammer sees that and then they can move in and then they can um you know go in and try to steal money um and like i said cryptocurrency is the the crime du jour right now where they try to try to get you to invest in cryptocurrency if anyone ever encourages you to invest in crypto and you do not know them Do not. It is a scam. It's an absolute scam. So yeah, now with AI, you can have one person in a room with all kinds of phones, cell phones set up in this room. And with AI, it can just keep sending out one wrong text message after another around the clock. And it barely costs anything.

12:00 They just need some cell phones and just some electricity. It's unbelievable. It is so profitable. So that was number two. And then the last one I want to talk about today is voice cloning as it relates to romance scams and also the grandparent scam. Because a grandparent scam comes and goes. It's never going to go away. To repeat the grandparent scam is you get a phone call and someone on the other end of the line says, Grandma, Grandma, or Grandpa, they figure out your sex when they, um, when you answer the phone and say, help, help, I'm in trouble. And there's multiple variations. Many involve a car accident, drugs, being pulled over, going to jail, hurting someone. And it's, it's an urgent plea for money. Um, and a lot of them say, you know, don't, don't tell mom and dad, I'll get in trouble. Um, But so people ask me when I do these scams, well, what if someone got my grandchild's voice and cloned it? And could they do that? Yes.

13:13 So I'm here in Southern Arizona. I've joined some presentations with the Pima County Sheriff's Department, and their fraud unit is really good. They put on a great presentation where they talk about voice cloning. And voice cloning is basically where they They have a computer program on a laptop and they record, they have someone read a few, like a paragraph of a few sentences, a paragraph of their voice. The computer has your voice now. And then what they do is they make it say anything they want. And they play this in front of the entire group. And it'll say something like, hey, Joe, this is Brian. I hate to bother you, but my credit card got canceled.

13:57 And I have to pay this fine or something like that. Can you email or wire me some money or send me some cryptocurrency right now? And I promise to pay you back. And it's so believable because it is in that person's voice. They can make it say anything. So can that be used with the grandparent scam? Absolutely, yes. But here's the problem with the grandparent scam. What if someone... finds, goes online, Facebook and finds a video or goes on YouTube or Instagram and find some audio of a grandchild. They manipulate it. They record it. They make a grandparent scam phone call where it says, grandma, grandma, help, help.

14:39 What if they make the phone call and the grandparent doesn't answer, you know, like, cause sometimes we don't. So they have to do all this work and hope that that grandparent will answer. So personally, I have not met anybody who's been targeted in the grandparent scam where AI was used. Does it happen? Yes, it does. But it is not as prevalent as we think. Just because of that reason, there's so many chances of things going wrong. And it is. It's very labor intensive. And scammers want to be efficient. They're not in it to waste time.

15:20 But this is where I think it is more prevalent, is romance scams. So remember, most romance scams start online. And it could be on Facebook. It could be words with friends. It could be a dating site. The scammers will initiate contact. They'll just make a very innocuous comment about a post. That's why it's very important to put your settings on private. But let's say you meet someone on a dating site. So you're out there on your own. You're looking for a partner. The scammers like to move off site. They want to get off the dating site. They will go to an app like WhatsApp or Signal or something like that. And the scammers just go back and forth using this app or just standard texting. But at a certain point, the potential victim says, well, Can we do a video call? Can we do Zoom? Can we do Teams? I want to see your face. And this is where the scammers can do what are called deep fake videos. And it's important because it keeps the scheme going and it helps convince the person that it's a real person. I've seen these voice cloning demonstrations and a video, um, the, uh, deep AI fakes, it's absolutely convincing.

16:50 The technology is only getting better and better. Um, and you know, when you add a video, um, to audio and you can see the face, um, it's crazy. They do something called face swapping. It's absolutely incredible. And I can only imagine how, how believable and how high quality it is going to be, um, in six months or a year or two years, it's going to be unbelievable. So yeah, you can't even trust what you see. You know, people say, I want to see it with my own eyes. Well, a lot of the stuff you see online is completely fake and fabricated. So those are my three things with AI.

17:30 Is AI a tool that scammers can use? Yes. But it's also a tool that we can use. You know, let's say you get a phishing email and you're not sure if it's legitimate or email or phishing email, you can copy it, paste it into an AI program online, and that AI program will give you its opinion and say, this is likely a scam, and then it'll say why. Or it'll say, no, this is a good email. It's not 100% foolproof. You could use two or three different AI programs just to be sure. But even better, talk to a friend. Talk to a neighbor. You know, my parents reach out to me all the time. They forward emails to me when they're not sure. So that's the big thing we always stress here at Rose is we're never in a hurry unless the house is on fire.

18:25 We don't have to rush. Criminals like urgency. Time is our friend. We never do anything instantly. So if you're out and about running errands, you're on vacation, you're at work, and you get an email and you're not sure if it's legitimate or not, just wait to get home or look at it in the morning. Take a break. You want to clear your head. Never try to do too many things at once. Every time where I've almost gotten into trouble with phishing emails is I'm just trying to get things done too quickly. We have to slow down. A friend once told me we've got to be like a sloth. We do everything slow and very deliberate. So reminder, Joyce and I and the rest of the team at Rose, we don't do this podcast, this radio show to scare you.

19:19 We do it to toughen you up, just to make you realize what's out there. Because we get angry when scammers steal from people. It motivates us. So we don't want anybody living in fear. But we have to have a healthy level of skepticism. Always ask yourself, could this be a scam? Is someone trying to rush me? Is there a sense of urgency? Do I feel something in the pit of my stomach? Is my heart beating faster than normal? That's not normal. Or is this too good to be true when it comes to things like the publisher's clearing house sweepstakes? So please, please, please go to roseadvocacy.org if you haven't done it. I know I sound like a broken record because every time I host the show, I talk about it. But you can see our email address, our website, right at the bottom of the screen, roseadvocacy.org, right on the front page. There's a blue button. You click.

20:23 All we ask for is your name and your email, and we will send you our website. monthly email that talks about all the latest scams and different ways that you can combat scams and help others. So please do that. And if you like what you heard today about AI, share with someone. Do you have a friend who's concerned about AI as it relates to scams? This is a good 20-minute investment in scam prevention, so please share that. That's all I have today. I really appreciate everyone watching and listening. Please go out there, be safe, you know, be skeptical in a healthy way and don't live in fear and look out for, for, for your loved ones.

21:06 Cause like, like I said earlier, we don't want anyone to be scammed. We want to prevent people from being scammed. Joyce will be back next week. Thank you all very much. Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. Tune in every Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time on K4HD Radio at K4HD. com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge so you have the power to make scam protection your healthy habit. And until then, feel free to reach out to Joyce and let's talk about scams.