So much talk now about the need to regulate AI given the implications on how powerful it will evolve into and potentially become a destructive force in our lives and even threaten humanity’s very existence.
As evident from the LinkedIn post below, AI is already being used to fool us and harm our financial well-being and mental too if we become a victim of a targeted scam to remove money from our savings.
One example given here is grandparent schemes where AI voice cloning is tricking grandparents into believing their grandchild is in present danger and needs their help. It is part of a whole area called elder fraud and one of great concern to law enforcement where police services will do a specific fraud prevention campaign to alert seniors to this type of financial fraud (e.g., justhangup.ca).
The other clear message in this posting beyond how AI is a force to be reckoned with in manipulating innocent victims is the extent of how much elder victims are losing. As stated below, “The average reported loss per older victim now exceeds $38,000. Over 12,400 seniors lost six figures to a single scheme last year. And per the DOJ, only about 1 in 5 elder fraud victims ever report it, so the real number is almost certainly far higher.”
Delay and verify independently whatever is being pitched your way as it may be a fraudster ruthlessly attempting to remove you of your hard-earned savings to help you fund your retirement.
Financial Crime Pre-Sales Solutions Consultant | Fraud, AML & Transaction Monitoring Platforms | Helping Financial Institutions Combat Financial Crime
Older Americans reported $7.7 billion in fraud losses last year. That’s a 59% jump in a single year, the largest of any age group tracked by the FBI.
I’ve had this come up in almost every call I’ve had recently, whether it’s a bank exploring trusted contact programs or a family member asking me privately how to protect a parent. So here’s what actually works, based on what regulators, banks, and the data are converging on.
The average reported loss per older victim now exceeds $38,000. Over 12,400 seniors lost six figures to a single scheme last year. And per the DOJ, only about 1 in 5 elder fraud victims ever report it, so the real number is almost certainly far higher.
Here’s what’s changed the game in the last year: AI. The FBI’s 2025 IC3 report included an AI-specific fraud category for the first time, and voice cloning is now considered the top AI attack vector in fraud generally. Scammers only need about three seconds of audio, pulled from a Facebook video, a voicemail greeting, a TikTok, to generate a synthetic voice that sounds like your kid or grandkid in distress. The classic “grandparent scam” used to rely on a stranger doing a bad impression over a bad phone line. Now it’s a cloned voice, panicked and specific, asking for bail money or hospital fees. That’s not a hypothetical, the FBI and FTC have both issued public warnings on it in the last few months.
What’s important to understand: AI hasn’t invented new fraud typologies. It’s made old ones (impersonation, urgency, emotional manipulation) dramatically more convincing and cheap to run at scale. The old advice, “listen for a robotic voice” or “watch for bad grammar,” doesn’t work anymore. The defense has to shift from spotting the fake to verifying the claim, independent of how convincing it sounds.
That’s why the strategies below lean so heavily on verification habits (a family code word, callback on a known number) rather than “trust your ear.” Your ear can’t be trusted the way it used to.
Have you seen this show up in your own family or client conversations? Curious how people are handling it.
#ElderFraud #AI #FinancialCrime #FraudPrevention #AML
