Scammers used AI voice cloning technology to impersonate Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown in fraudulent emails claiming recipients owed the federal government nearly $100,000.
Salt Lake City Police Department reported that a Woods Cross resident received a fraudulent email containing an AI-generated video message impersonating Police Chief Mike Brown. The scammers used footage from a television interview Brown had conducted several years ago and overlaid it with AI-cloned audio claiming the recipient had a rejected wire transfer and owed the federal government nearly $100,000. The fake email came from a Google account rather than the official slc.gov domain. Detective Dalton Beebe noted that while the voice sounded like Chief Brown, there were detectable flaws including unnatural speech patterns, odd emphasis on words, inconsistent tone, poor lip synchronization, and acoustic edits between sentences. This incident is part of a broader trend of AI-powered impersonation scams affecting law enforcement agencies, with similar cases reported in Tulsa and India. The FBI has previously warned about such scams, and companies like OpenAI have expressed concerns about releasing advanced voice cloning technology due to potential abuse.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to gain a personal advantage over others such as through cheating, fraud, scams, blackmail or targeted manipulation of beliefs or behavior. Examples include AI-facilitated plagiarism for research or education, impersonating a trusted or fake individual for illegitimate financial benefit, or creating humiliating or sexual imagery.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed