Alleged AI-Driven Phishing Scam Impersonates Maine Town Official to Falsely Request $22,500
January 15, 2025
An alleged AI-generated phishing email targeted a resident of Gray, Maine, falsely claiming to be from the town’s planning department. The alleged email, bearing a fake signature and official-looking letterhead, requested $22,500 for a zoning board meeting. Town officials have reportedly warned residents of increasing risks posed by AI-enabled scams, emphasizing that the town does not accept electronic payments and urging vigilance against similar fraudulent emails.
- Alleged deployer
- unknown-scammers
- Alleged developer
- unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
- Alleged harmed parties
- town-of-gray-maine-officials, steven-souchek, residents-of-gray-maine, general-public, doug-webster
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/910
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.