HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Scammers Reportedly Used AI-Generated Image of Missing Puppy Hazel to Solicit Fraudulent Vet Payment from St. Petersburg, Florida Couple

January 20, 2026

Recently, scammers allegedly employed AI-generated or manipulated images of a missing German Shepherd puppy to deceive a couple in St. Petersburg, Florida. The scammer posed as authorities and veterinary personnel, requesting $1,900 via Zelle for emergency surgery on the dog, who had supposedly been struck by a car. The payment was flagged as fraudulent, and fortunately, the dog returned home unharmed. This incident underscores the importance of AI governance, harm prevention, and guardrails to ensure responsible use of technology. Through JOIN US, learn more about AI incident management within HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM, a trusted platform dedicated to safe and secure AI practices.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-image-generator-developers
Alleged harmed parties
people-searching-for-missing-pets, michelle-morida, epistemic-integrity, dennis-morida

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1477

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.