Description: A Chicago-area Vietnam War veteran, Richard Lyons, reportedly lost $10,000 to a cryptocurrency scam that used purported AI voice cloning and fake social media profiles to impersonate Elon Musk. The fraudster allegedly convinced Lyons to invest in bogus cryptocurrency opportunities using fake voice memos, images, and spoofed caller IDs showing "Elon Musk." The scam reportedly involved dozens of messages and deepfake audio files that reinforced the impersonation.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developer and Unknown voice cloning technology developer developed an AI system deployed by Unknown scammer , Unknown fraudster and Unknown scammer impersonating Elon Musk, which harmed Richard Lyons and Cryptocurrency investors.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake technology and Unknown voice cloning technology
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1142
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-07-07
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team is uncovering how criminals are using famous faces to lure in victims. Scammers are impersonating celebrities, convincing people to invest in fake cryptocurrency opportunities.
One victim lost $10,000 to a p…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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