As of: January 31, 2024, 1:53 p.m
By: Robin Dittrich
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Telephone scammers are constantly trying out new methods to get consumers' money.
On ZDF a man talks about a particularly perfidious scam.
Bremen - Whether it's fake police officers, grandchild tricks or phishing emails: fraudsters know many ways to get money or people's data.
In the ZDF program WISO, a man reports that his girlfriend's voices sound deceptively real on the phone.
ZDF broadcast reports on particularly perfidious telephone fraud
The WISO program aired on January 22nd.
There is a report about a new fraud using AI that is not a dream of the future, but a current problem.
One of the people affected by this is a man who talks about a mysterious phone call on the ZDF show.
As he reports, the Frankfurt police were allegedly on the other end of the line.
She informed him that his girlfriend had run over a pregnant woman and seriously injured her.
In the ZDF program WISO, a man reports about a scam involving AI software that he almost fell victim to.
© Funke Photo Services/Imago (symbolic image)
According to the voice on the phone, she didn't turn herself in but committed a hit-and-run - but she has since been caught.
The man concerned, Jürgen R., is told that he has to deposit 80,000 or 90,000 euros to free his girlfriend from custody.
Even though he thought the call was real, he wanted to talk to his girlfriend.
Then came the proof of authenticity for Jürgen R., his wife answered the phone: “That was her.
And she cried on the phone, choked with tears, about running over a pregnant woman.”
WISO broadcast: Man is tricked by AI and reports about his nightmare
Jürgen R. didn't hesitate for long and really wanted to help his girlfriend.
He only realized much later that he had fallen for a scam.
The voices of relatives on the telephone are deceptively imitated using AI.
All the fraudsters need are the voices of those affected.
“The fraudsters apparently use snatches of language from social media, for example, and manipulate them,” says Ralf Reichertz, head of the consumer law department at the Thuringia Consumer Center.
The fraudsters can use these snippets of language to “use AI software to generate sentences that a person has never said before,” says computer scientist Anne Kunstmann at WISO.
According to the expert, using this software is now extremely easy, as she illustrates using an example with the editor of the show.
With a program and just a few bits of language, “impressive quality” can be guaranteed, as the computer scientist says.
The police are also aware of the scam, but there are no official statistics.
The data and voices for the fake news can come from video portals, social media or homepages, says Hans-Joachim Henschel from the LKA Lower Saxony.
Jürgen R. cannot explain where the fraudsters got his wife's voice.
Shortly before he could transfer the money, his unsuspecting girlfriend called him and was able to clarify the matter in time.
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