Scammers Are Getting Better at Stealing Money From You and Your Business

While many still fall for even the most basic of scams these days, more of us than ever are educated on what to look out for. You probably know, for example, that a call about your “car’s extended warranty” is a call you should hang up on, or that a poorly-written email congratulating you on winning a “huge prize” belongs in the trash.

However, you can never let your guard down: Scammers are continuing to improve their tactics, and are getting more clever by the day in their approaches, especially in the age of AI. The more clever the scammers get, the more at-risk you and your employees are of falling victim to their schemes.

In Houston alone, investigators believe citizens have lost anywhere from $10,000 to $1 million due to these scams. In the US, the numbers rise to $3.31 billion. Scammers are turning to AI programs like ChatGPT to improve their communications and manipulation: What might have been a red flag in the past due to spelling and grammar errors can now be remedied by a program that can generate conversation in most languages quite fluently. No matter where the scammer lives, they can craft a convincing scheme.

What’s worse, many of these schemes siphon money through cryptocurrency. Victims that give their money to crypto scammers have a hard time ever getting it back, due to the anonymous nature of the platform.

Not only have scammers’ spelling and grammar improved, but so have their manipulative tactics. Scammers will reach out on a variety of platforms, hoping to catch you on the one you use most. Let’s say they reach out on LinkedIn: They can pull a decent amount of information on you from just this page alone, which informs what they say in their conversations with you. You might think this person really gets you, or that they’re an expert in their field, so when it comes time to sell you on their sob story, or perhaps a great business idea, you’re hooked.