AIPolicyTracker
Menu

AI incident ·

FBI Reports Ongoing Vishing and Smishing Campaign Allegedly Targeting Government Officials Using Purportedly AI-Generated Voices

3 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Deepfake Technology Developers, Synthetic Audio Generation Technology Developers and 1 other and deployed by Scammers allegedly harmed United States State Government Officials, United States Federal Government Officials and 2 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
3 reportsMay 2025

What happened

According to a May 15, 2025 public alert from the FBI and IC3, malicious actors have been using purported AI-generated voice messages and smishing tactics since April 2025 to impersonate senior U.S. officials. The campaign reportedly targets government personnel and their contacts to gain access to personal or official accounts. The FBI warns the scheme may involve credential theft and social engineering, with AI voice cloning used to increase believability.

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (3)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. Alert Number: I-051525-PSA May 15, 2025 Senior US Officials Impersonated in Malicious Messaging Campaign
    ic3.gov · Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI
  2. FBI warns of fake texts, deepfake calls impersonating senior U.S. officials
    cyberscoop.com · Derek B. Johnson
  3. Impersonator breached Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’s phone, Trump says
    washingtonpost.com · Vivian Ho

Who was involved

Alleged deployer
Scammers
Alleged harmed party
United States State Government Officials, United States Federal Government Officials, Former United States Government Officials, Family And Friends Of United States Government Officials

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Other incidents involving Scammers

Source record: incident #1077 on the AI Incident Database · all 3 reports