A MAN was cruelly scammed out of £200 after being sweet-talked by a fake Jennifer Aniston begging for cash for “Apple subscriptions”.
Paul Davis, 43, from Southampton, handed over the money after believing he was talking to the Friends star on Facebook.
Paul claims he has fallen victim to a swarm of AI scammers impersonating well-known celebrities, among them the iconic Friends star, in a strange new trend of deepfake deception.
The unemployed Brit, who battles depression, revealed how he was bombarded with dozens of eerily convincing videos from bogus celebrity accounts.
Some fraudulently posed as tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
But it was a phoney Aniston who finally fooled him after sending what looked like her driving licence.
The fraudster also told Paul she “loved him” before asking for money.
Paul said: “I’ve had fake videos from Jennifer Aniston saying she loves me and asking for £200. I believed it – and I paid.”
The cruel scam saw him send £200 worth of non-refundable Apple gift cards to the supposed Hollywood sweetheart.
“I got bitten,” he added. “Once bitten, twice shy.”
This alarming scheme is part of an unsettling surge in AI-driven scams, where fraudsters generate disturbingly realistic deepfake videos of celebrities to deceive unknowing individuals into giving away money and personal information.
Paul reports that he has been persistently bothered for months, bombarded daily with bogus messages asserting he has won anything from substantial cash prizes to a luxurious Range Rover.
One video even showed a fake Zuckerberg declaring: “This is not a scam – believe me” while flashing a dodgy ID.
Another sent him a bogus “certificate from Facebook” claiming he’d scooped £500k and a luxury motor.
“They make it look so real,” Paul said.
“It’s been going on for five months. I thought someone would get in trouble for this, but they seem to be having a laugh – and getting away with it.”
Worryingly, Paul says he’s not the only one falling victim.
He revealed: “Someone I know’s lost over a grand in Apple gift cards to these scams.”
Now, struggling with his mental health and unable to work, Paul says the constant barrage of cons is taking its toll.
Paul said: “I can’t keep taking that sort of hit. They’re asking for bank details, credit card info – everything.”
The 43-year-old says he is sharing his story in a bid to warn others and stop the scammers in their tracks.
It comes after a scammer who conned a French woman out of nearly £700,000 by pretending to be Brad Pitt was unmasked in Nigeria.
Interior designer Anne, 53, was scammed into funding a fake cancer treatment for the star after receiving AI-generated selfies and sweet-talking texts.
The cruel romance con lasted over a year, costing Anne her fortune, her marriage, and her mental health.
Eventually a crack team discovered the scammer’s identity, his Nigerian base, and 34 other victims.
Meanwhile, another woman put out a call for help after noticing her mum fall for an AI deepfake scam of Owen Wilson.
The unnamed woman took to Reddit, revealing both she and her sister had failed to convince her mum that the man she was chatting to was not the real actor.
She decided to share the AI deepfake video her mum had been sent by ‘Owen Wilson’ with the title ‘Owen Wilson befriended my mother.’
What are deepfakes?
Here’s what you need to know…
- Deepfakes use artificial intelligence and machine learning to produce face-swapped videos with barely any effort
- They can be used to create realistic videos that make celebrities appear as though they’re saying something they didn’t
- Deepfakes have also been used by sickos to make fake porn videos that feature the faces of celebrities or ex-lovers
- To create the videos, users first track down an XXX clip featuring a porn star that looks like an actress
- They then feed an app with hundreds – and sometimes thousands – of photos of the victim’s face
- A machine learning algorithm swaps out the faces frame-by-frame until it spits out a realistic, but fake, video
- To help other users create these videos, pervs upload “facesets”, which are huge computer folders filled with a celebrity’s face that can be easily fed through the “deepfakes” app
