Scam Alert: new warning about AI voice scam calls

All right, let's talk about this one in our own backyard for you. Crooks are using artificial intelligence now to clone the deputy's voice and then trick people into handing over cash. Listen to this. This is Captain Steve Moser. I'm calling to speak with the deputy. Please come in contact with our office. So right there you heard Osceola County Sheriff, but this is not the deputy's voice that you thought was on the other line. It's actually someone who just cloned the voice of one of the deputies. So calls like these happen over and over again in that county. And deputies say that the scammers are calling demanding for money or cryptocurrency. So we want to bring in Captain Kimberly Montez right now. She is the director of public relations at the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. Captain, I got to ask you, is this something that completely shocked you that we are at this point where we're able to clone voices and trick people? You know, really, it doesn't because we have seen these scams evolve over the years. And now with AI, we knew that this had a potential. We've received about 40 calls from the public this year about people calling, saying that somebody has a warrant, pretending they're a deputy. But this kind of takes it to a new level because if someone were to do their checking, Captain Mosher is a captain with the Osceola Sheriff's Office. If someone were to check, they would see and think that this was actually true. so we want to tell people law enforcement no matter what agency will never call somebody on the phone saying they have a warrant demanding money this is a scam hang up contact your local law enforcement and let them know you know one of the things i think about is we talk about this all the time we've done so many stories about this but yet people do still get tricked they do still get scammed what can we say what can we do so that people do know that they've got to open their eyes cross their t's to be sure that they are not scammed when something like this happens you know you're absolutely right i think a lot of times it's people who are trusting um it's our seniors, who are of a different generation that they can't become a victim of this we want people to realize a lot of these scammers are are playing on emotions and they're playing on the fact that they don't want you to hang up the phone they don't want you to double check what they're what they're saying. So we want people to take a moment. First of all, a lot of people, you shouldn't even be answering your phone if you don't know who's calling. These scammers call all the time. They can clone a phone number. They can actually, you can have it actually say the Osceola Sheriff's Office is on your phone and it's not somebody from the Osceola Sheriff's Office. So let somebody leave you a message and then deal with it. But just yesterday we had a person scammed out of $30,000 because somebody convinced him that he was of a financial institution and needed to check something, and somebody lost $30,000. And we're seeing this more and more. Romance scams, the warrant scams, somebody calls and says that you missed jury duty. No law enforcement agency is ever going to call and demand money over the phone, and we want people to realize that. don't panic don't stay on the phone hang up and contact your local law enforcement so they can document this, Kim, when this happens like in this gentleman's case that you're talking about that was scammed out of 30 grand like there's so many weird ways that they they try to get your money right and it's that's i always feel like that's a red flag right like they're they're like oh go to what like this money machine or go here tell you to do all these weird things you know a lot of People are being tricked into paying with Bitcoin. We've had several victims this year lose thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency. And they go to these machines at these gas stations, at these other convenience stores, and then they open their account and that money is gone. There's no way of tracking it. Sheriff Blackman has a team of people here at the sheriff's office that are fraud investigators, and they stay busy all the time. again first thing if you get a phone call always question that phone call if someone calls and says your loved ones in the hospital your loved ones in jail you need money you need to pay right away they're trying to play on your emotions they're trying to play on the anxiety take a moment and do some checking contact a valid number don't just contact the number that you got the phone call from and we want to try and just make people aware that these scams are going on every day yeah this happened to me two years ago and actually it was a Seminole County sheriff's number came up on my phone we were out of the country Kim and and i panicked and i full-on panicked and i was just lucky that i was able to call the sheriff's wife and say, Diana, is this for real? and thank goodness she talked me off a cliff because I was really nervous, so if it can happen to us it can happen to anybody and and it's just it's a sad state of affairs that these people prey on us, and thank you for letting us bring this awareness, we don't want anybody to be a victim if you get one of these phone calls, hang up if it's truly an emergency, they will call back if it's truly somebody that needs to get a hold of you, they will call back, hang up the phone or first of all don't even answer if you don't know who's calling you, Captain Montez, thank you so much for getting the message out there and we're just hoping that this conversation maybe saves somebody from losing thirty thousand dollars, really really absolutely yeah, thank you Kim Montez from the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, once again we thank her for coming, absolutely, bye Kim, bye Kim, good to Thank you.