NORVAL, ON ― A 74-year-old woman lost over $60 000 from her retirement savings yesterday in a sophisticated, but in her situation, quite obvious scam, police say.
Gina Rossi was just preparing to go out and do her weekly grocery shopping when she received a call which, unbeknownst to her, was from a scam artist who had used AI to deepfake her 31-year-old son, Andrew’s voice. This was unnecessary, because Rossi has only spoken to her son twice in the past seven years, and probably would not recognize his voice anyway.
Her alleged son claimed that he was being held at a police station and needed money for bail. However, critics say that it should have been a red flag when he said that Rossi was the first person he thought to call, because he has a wife, several friends, two sisters, and a mechanic, all of whom he has remained in much closer and more regular contact with over the past decade.
Rossi should probably also have cottoned on when he got the province he lived in wrong, but as she explains, “he never bothered to tell me he was even seeing anybody until eight months after their wedding, so I figured he also just moved halfway across the country without mentioning it.”
Rossi’s family has expressed frustration in the wake of the loss, as they have repeatedly told her to never ever answer calls from numbers she doesn’t recognize, after she fell for every other common scam, including the Nigerian prince and the CRA. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to them that that would include Andrew’s number, and that she would therefore ignore the rule, resulting in by far the largest financial loss to date.
Rossi only finally grew suspicious when the scammer very politely refused her offer to come down and visit him and the kindergarten-aged granddaughter she’d never met, because it would be so far for her to travel, whereas her son’s refusal would have been brusque and lacked any explanation whatsoever. Sadly, it was too late, and she had already purchased and texted thirty $2 000 digital Amazon gift cards to the unknown caller.
Despite the losses, Rossi bears her scammer no ill will. “Even if it wasn’t him, it was just so nice to hear his voice again, you know? In fact if this nice young man calls me once a week and pretends to be my little Andy, I may just leave him Andrew’s portion of the inheritance in my will.”
Andrew, for his part, only learned of the scam when the scammer left him a voicemail urging him to call his mother more, because “she sounds really lonely, man. Like, I’m actually worried about her.” Family sources suspect he may do so if only to get in her good graces, considering that his initial reaction consisted merely of “Damn, $60 000? I had no idea mom was sitting on that kind of spare cash.”
