Scam Watch

Most common scams — recognize them before falling for them

Fast reference pages with warning signs, immediate actions, sources, and links to check a suspicious case.

Grandparent emergency scam — bail / hospital cash courier

Caller (sometimes AI voice clone of grandchild from social media samples) tells grandparent 'I've been arrested / in an accident, don't tell mom and...

Medicare 'new card' scam — health insurance ID harvesting

Caller posing as Medicare or insurer says a 'new Medicare card with chip / DNA testing kit / back brace' is being issued and asks for the Medicare...

Military romance scam — fake deployed soldier impersonation

Scammer creates profile on Match, OurTime, Facebook using stolen photos of real US military member (often general or special forces), claims...

Sweepstakes / lottery winner scam — Publishers Clearing House impostor

Senior receives call/letter: 'Congratulations, you've won $2.5M from Publishers Clearing House / Mega Millions / Costco'. To claim the prize, victim...

Beware of fake inheritance notifications asking for upfront fees

Scammers send convincing messages claiming you are the sole heir of a distant relative or unknown wealthy stranger. They promise millions and ask you...

Advance-Fee Scams: How Fraudsters Reinvents Old Traps with Geopolitical Hooks

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Deepfake KYC bypass — synthetic ID + liveness deepfake

Sumsub 2024 reported a 10x rise in deepfake based KYC attacks on banks / exchanges / brokers. Attacker generates fake ID document (passport /...

AI-generated fake employment reference + recommendation letter

Job applicant (or fraud ring like DPRK IT workers) generates fake reference letters via GPT 4 / Claude — perfect business English, plausible names,...

AI-generated invoice with pixel-perfect vendor logo + signature

Attacker uses Midjourney / SDXL / GPT Vision to clone a vendor's invoice template — exact logo, watermark, formatting, even a fake authorising...

AI-generated profile photos on dating apps + LinkedIn (StyleGAN / Midjourney)

Scammers populate Tinder / Bumble / LinkedIn / Instagram with photos generated by StyleGAN3, Midjourney, FLUX. Used for pig butchering, romance, fake...

Instagram Account Hijack via Meta AI Support Bot: How It Works and How to Stay Safe

Hackers are exploiting Meta's new AI customer support chatbot to hijack Instagram accounts, including high profile handles like the Obama White House...

LLM-written BEC email — perfect grammar across languages, no telltale typos

Threat actors use ChatGPT / Claude / local LLMs to write Business Email Compromise lures in flawless English, Italian, German, French, Mandarin etc....

AI essay-mill scam — students pay for 'human-written' work that's GPT-generated

Essay mill websites charge students $20 200 per assignment claiming 'human writers'. In reality, ChatGPT / Claude generate the work in minutes, mill...

AI-generated fake court / police document for extortion or fee fraud

Attackers use multimodal LLMs to generate convincing court summons, police citations, prosecutor letters — perfect typography, official looking...

AI-generated fake news network for ad-revenue + influence operations

NewsGuard (2024) tracked 1000+ AI generated 'news' websites — full editorial content written by GPT/Claude, headshots StyleGAN, RSS scraped +...

Full-AI romance — no human, end-to-end LLM chatbot relationship

Latest evolution: the scammer is a fully automated chatbot pipeline (LLM for chat + voice TTS for occasional voice notes + AI image gen for 'selfies...

AI-generated 'finfluencer' promoting bogus trading platform

Fully synthetic 'finance influencer' (no real human) on Instagram/TikTok/X promotes a 'proprietary AI trading bot' with screenshots of 1000% returns....

Multi-party deepfake Zoom call impersonating CFO + execs (Arup $25M HK case Jan 2024)

Attackers harvested LinkedIn/YouTube/webinar footage of Arup execs, trained real time face swap + voice clone models, then invited a Hong Kong...

Statecraft deepfake — fake former Ukrainian FM Kuleba Zoom (Sen. Cardin Sept 2024)

An apparent nation state actor (Russia/China/Iran suspected) impersonated former Ukrainian FM Dmytro Kuleba in a live Zoom with US Senator Ben...

Celebrity-endorsed deepfake investment video (Musk / Trump / Bocelli / Schumacher)

Hijacked YouTube channels (sometimes 1M subs) livestream deepfake 'Elon Musk' / 'Trump' announcing 'send 1 BTC / ETH to this address, receive double...

Diplomatic / NGO Zoom-meeting setup with deepfake of known interlocutor

Threat actor scrapes public footage of a known ex official / NGO leader / scholar the target would reasonably take a meeting with. Schedules a Zoom...

Deepfake dirigeant — fausse visio Teams avec PDG / DAF

Mode opératoire identique à Arup / WPP, mais ciblé sur entreprises françaises (CAC40, ETI): visio Teams/Zoom où le 'PDG' et le 'DAF' sont des...

Deepfake forensic tells — iris reflection asymmetry, blink anomaly, neck-edge artifacts

Reality Defender + Hive + Truepic + DARPA SemaFor identify multiple deterministic tells in deepfaked video. Useful for analysts + journalists...

Political deepfake — Biden / Putin / Macron synthetic announcement

Deepfake video of a head of state issuing fake order (Biden conceding, Putin announcing nuclear strike, Macron resigning). Used for market...

Live-deepfake video call in pig-butchering romance scam (HK ring 27 arrests Oct 2024)

Scammers built AI generated attractive female profile photos, opened Tinder/Instagram contact, escalated to WhatsApp + live video calls — but the...

Sextortion with deepfake of victim's face on adult content

Attacker scrapes victim's public photos (LinkedIn / Instagram), face swaps them onto pornographic clip, then emails the victim demanding crypto...

AI-generated CSAM / sextortion of minors — face-swap of teen onto explicit content

Scammers (often based abroad) target teens via Instagram / Snapchat / Discord, scrape their photos, generate AI explicit deepfake, then extort: pay...

AI-generated 'wedding / event photo' extortion — 'you were there with [person]'

Attacker uses face swap to insert victim into compromising photos with a child / mistress / political enemy at a fake event, then extorts: pay or...

Teams meeting deepfake of CEO Mark Read (WPP attempt May 2024)

Attackers built a fake WhatsApp using Read's public photo, scheduled a Microsoft Teams call, then ran a deepfake video feed (YouTube footage retimed)...

Voice-clone of bank fraud-dept officer + caller-ID spoof

Scammer spoofs the bank's official anti fraud number on caller ID, then a voice cloned from a real customer service rep (sometimes recorded from an...