Ohio Man Scammed by AI Avatar of Jelly Roll
A disabled man was scammed out of money after he was sent an AI video of the country music star Jelly Roll saying his name.
Ronnie Flint from Springfield, Ohio, was sent a message by an account impersonating Jelly Roll, but Flint says initially he wasn’t convinced after he received a message saying he had won $50,000 for a brand new car.
The account then asked — and this is typical of how these scams work — Flint to cover the cost of shipping to get his prizes. The page then sent what the scammers claimed was Jelly Roll’s official driver’s license. The fake ID comically lists Jelly Roll’s name as ‘Jolly roll.’
Flint says that after the initial messages and ‘driver’s license’, he didn’t believe it was really Jelly Roll. But then the scammers sent a video of an AI version of Jelly Roll that made him believe it really was the country singer.
“When they sent the second video where he actually said my full name, that got me,” Flint tells Nexstar’s WDTN. “I was like, wow, it really is Jelly Roll. He said my name.”
Flint sent $70 in the form of Apple gift cards. “I even told him that I’m on disability. You know, this is all the money that I have for the rest of the month,” says Flint.
After Flint spoke with a family member who advised him that it was probably a scam, he didn’t send any more money and reported it to the police. However, that hasn’t stopped him from receiving messages.
“They’re thinking I’m going to send them another $30 on the 3rd, which ain’t going to happen,” Flint says.
AI Nightmares
Public figures are increasingly being AI-cloned against their wishes. The 1980s rock band Crowded House was recently forced to put out a Facebook post debunking an AI-generated video in which a report claims 67-year-old lead singer Neil Finn has had a child.
The elaborate video in the style of a news report, which features a convincing video of Finn, is actually a drug ad. It features the AI Finn talking about his decreasing sexual prowess.
“We’re not sure where this came from but please don’t be fooled. Neil’s never had trouble with erections,” the band writes on Facebook.
Last year, PetaPixel reported on an AI grandma that flipped the script on scammers by purposefully wasting their time by maintaining random conversations about made-up family members or fake hobbies.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
