Falling in love online, it happens. But transferring 200,000 yuan (around 26,000 euros) to a person who does not exist is another story. However, this is what happened to Mr. Liu, resident of Shanghai, convinced to maintain a relationship with a certain Mrs. Jiao. Except that this mysterious girlfriend was only an illusion, made from scratch thanks to artificial intelligence …
When virtual love turns into a nightmare
Behind this well -established scam, a team of crooks who used advanced AI technologies to create a convincing identity. Photos, videos, falsified documents … Everything seemed real. Ms. Jiao had dreams (opening a business), galleys (medical invoices to pay), and Mr. Liu did not hesitate to take out the wallet to help him. It was only after several months of messages and exchanges without ever seeing it in real life that he started to have doubts. Too late: the crooks had already pocketed the money and disappeared in the wild.
Sentimental scams have always existed, but with AI, they reach a completely different level. Images and videos more real than life, fluid conversations generated automatically … Difficult to distinguish the true from the false.
And Mr. Liu is far from being the only one to have been trapped. In France, a woman has recently been defrauded by more than 700,000 euros by believing to chat with… actor Brad Pitt. The crook used false videos and well -turned messages to convince her that he needed help paying medical costs.
Same scenario in the United Kingdom, where a sixty-something woman paid nearly 20,000 pounds to a crook posing for a colonel of the American army on Tinder. And what about this American mother whose daughter was virtually “kidnapped”: the criminals used AI to reproduce her child’s voice and try to extort a million dollars.
Faced with the multiplication of these high-tech scams, it is necessary to redouble vigilance. Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, warns against these practices and recommends never sending money to someone that one has never encountered in real life. The crooks play on emotions, create an emotional bond, and once the confidence has been established, go to the attack.
If an online relationship seems too beautiful to be true, advice: ask yourself the right questions. And above all, before taking out the bank card, make sure that your “soul mate” is not an ultra sophisticated bot.
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