This isn’t any solution to sustain with grandma.
Cruel scammers are cheating elderly people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars with a brand new high tech scam that uses AI to search out their grandchildren’s voices on TikTok after which use the sounds to make phony phone calls designed to trick the seniors, cops on Long Island warned Friday.
The scam involves criminals finding a vulnerable and elderly person with grandkids — then scouring social media sites like TikTok for videos of the young people speaking.
They then use voice-cloning software and spoofed phone numbers to make panicked calls pretending to be that grandchild, claiming they’ve been arrested or hurt and urgently need bail money or medical funds.
“They’re all the time attempting to stay a step ahead,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina told The Post on Friday.
Catalina confirmed the department has been seeing a growing variety of these cases, and said the software criminals are using can perfectly emulate another person’s voice — often fooling the realm’s vulnerable and elderly population.
“It’s often times a grandchild scheme we’re seeing, where the person will call and say that they’re in some form of trouble that requires money,” Catalina said.
Police said victims have been duped into forking over hundreds of dollars in money and wire transfers — pondering they’re rescuing a loved one when actually they’re being scammed by an artificial voice and a criminal on the opposite end of the road.
Catalina said the department has seen an uptick in some of these scams in recent months and warned the general public to remain vigilant, especially when receiving emotional pleas involving money and secrecy.
He advised families to determine a “secure word” in case of emergencies, and to succeed in out to the person they’re claiming to be after receiving the decision to substantiate directly before transferring any money.
As for the scammers, Catalina warned that the department is making these crimes a high priority given the massive amount of cases.
“If we discover the individuals who do that, who know exactly who they’re stealing from, we are going to prosecute you to the fullest — these crimes are a priority to us and we’re gonna be sure that that we unravel this,” Catalina said.
In 2023, over 3,000 scams were reported on Long Island — leading to over $126 million stolen from mostly senior residents, in accordance with probably the most recent data from AARP.
Nearly $74 million was stolen from Nassau, and almost $54 million was taken in Suffolk that yr alone.
And Catalina warned it is going to only worsen as AI continues to progress.
“They’re getting increasingly sophisticated, so everybody needs to be very careful,” he said.
