A couple dozen patrons showed up for a chicken sandwich with a side of scams last week at Bicentennial Chapel.
The educational lunch featured the FBI’s Hannah Walter, an intelligence analyst, and Cam Sanders, a special agent, who spoke about the wide variety of tricks and tools used by fraudsters to separate unsuspecting people from their money.
According to Walter, there were more than $13 billion in reported losses due to scams, and she added that number is likely underreported.
The talk focused on how scammers are using artificial intelligence and covered several schemes including government impersonation scams, pig butchering/investment scams, romance scams, tech support scams and toll road scams, among others.
For example, one con targeting grandparents involves the con artist spoofing their grandchild’s voice and then using the fake audio to ask for money.
“They only need around three seconds of audio to be able to voice clone with AI,” Walter said.
She added one victim sent a perpetrator $20,000 after hearing a voice that sounded exactly like her grandson.
Sanders added that families should come up with code words that could authenticate them to one another.
Sanders said both the government and commercial sectors are working on better tools to help identify what is fake and what is real, but as AI tools become more powerful, telling the difference will get harder.
“Unfortunately, this is kind of one of the things where detection is trailing the leading edge of it,” Sanders said.
For now, at least when it comes to video, Sanders said there are some things to pay attention to that will help people identify if a video is AI-generated.
He said to look at the corners of the subject’s mouth, which can be out of sync with what is being said, and pay attention to other unnatural expressions, such as whether the subject is blinking normally.
AI can struggle with fine details, which can show up in a subject’s hair and teeth or the rendering of fine movements like the effect of wind on a dog’s fur coat or the way someone talks with their hands.
Walter and Sanders urged people to always pause and think about whether a request really makes sense, like if someone is asking for gift cards to help pay for their heart surgery. And they encouraged people to independently verify any requests they get via text message or phone call, but cautioned those in attendance to avoid clicking on any links or calling any numbers provided by the potential scammers.
