PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — A social media scam using artificial intelligence to trick people out of their money has hit Palm Beach County, and people are falling victim to it.
David Scarola is a Palm Beach Gardens-based professional photographer who has been in the business for 13 years. He uses social media to promote his photography, but was recently locked out of both his personal and professional Facebook accounts.
“My Facebook identity has been hijacked and infiltrated,” Scarola said.
Scarola reached out to WPTV for help with a plan to scam a friend: Facebook hackers used AI to impersonate Scarola and post fake ads on his page selling non-existent cars.
“I have six people I know who have donated,” Scarola said.
His friends estimate they lost a total of $4,500 in the mail. One victim sent the hacker $800 to buy a car for his teenage son.
Scarola’s friend, Thorne Aubrey, told WPTV about her encounter with the hacker, who messaged Aubrey on Facebook, telling her there was a problem with her Facebook account and that she needed to send a code to the three of them.
Suspicious, Aubrey told the person she thought was Scarola to call her via Facebook.
“He FaceTimed me and it was him!” Aubrey said.
Unfortunately, by the time Aubrey realized that the hackers had used AI to fake Scarola’s face, it was too late: the next day, her Facebook account was hijacked by the hackers, and the same fake ads were appearing.
“I did everything I thought was right, including questioning whether it was even him in the first place,” Aubrey said.
WPTV investigated and spoke with Dr. Mehran Basiratmand, a cybersecurity expert at Florida Atlantic University, who said these types of scams are rare, but not uncommon.
“Unfortunately, the Tour is only getting better,” Basiratmand said. “(They’re) basically trying to cast a wide net to catch as many people as possible. They’re playing a numbers game.”
Basiratmand said it would only take a one-minute video of a person’s face for a hacker to create an AI version of them.
WPTV reporter Joel Lopez asked Basiratmand how he would know if an image was AI in a situation like this.
“Ask questions that clearly justify responses that an AI might not be able to produce so easily,” Basiratmand says.
Scarola contacted police, who instructed her to contact Facebook.
“I’ve contacted the police but they can’t do anything. Social media hacks, ongoing scams, people losing money, that’s outside their jurisdiction,” Scarola said.
Social media was the number one source of fraud, accounting for $2.7 billion between January 2021 and June 2023, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
WPTV reached out to Facebook for comment but did not receive a response.
