HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Florida Couple Reportedly Loses $45,000 in Alleged AI-Generated Elon Musk Impersonation Scam

December 15, 2025

A Florida couple allegedly lost approximately $45,000 in a deepfake scam involving AI-generated videos of Elon Musk. The scammers reportedly used social engineering to trick the victim into believing they were part of a fake car giveaway and investment scheme through Facebook and WhatsApp. The incident underscores the importance of trustworthy AI governance for harm prevention in such incidents.

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Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers, unknown-scammers-impersonating-elon-musk
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
george-hendricks, unnamed-spouse-of-george-hendricks, general-public, general-public-of-florida, general-public-of-the-united-states, epistemic-integrity, elon-musk, investors, elderly-individuals, elderly-investors

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1306

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.