AI incident ·
Yahoo Boys and Scammers from Morocco Allegedly Target U.S. Widows and Vulnerable Individuals with 'Artificial Patriot' Scams
In brief
An AI system built by Synthetic Audio Generation Technology Developers and Deepfake Technology Developers and deployed by Yahoo Boys, Scammers In West Africa and 4 others allegedly harmed Widows, National Security And Intelligence Stakeholders and 5 others.
- Risk domain
- Malicious Actors & Misuse
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 2 reports
What happened
Yahoo Boys (from Nigeria and Ghana) and scammers from Morocco are reportedly targeting U.S. widows and vulnerable individuals using AI-generated images and fake military profiles in "Artificial Patriot" scams. They have allegedly impersonated military officials such as General Matthew W. McFarlane to gain trust, sharing fabricated backstories and emotional appeals. Once trust is established, they request money through untraceable methods.
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.
- India DPDP Act
- Law on Artificial Intelligence (2025)
- Law No. 132/2025 on artificial intelligence
- EU AI Act
- Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA)
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 (2)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Yahoo Boys, Scammers In West Africa, Scammers In Nigeria, Scammers In Ghana, Brouteurs, Scammers In Morocco
- Alleged harmed party
- Widows, National Security And Intelligence Stakeholders, Matthew W. Mcfarlane, Impersonated American Military Officials, Epistemic Integrity, Emotionally Vulnerable Individuals, American Widows
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Malicious Actors & Misuse
- Risk subdomain
- 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
- 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."
- IP/copyright loss
"IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."
- 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...
- 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."
- 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."
- 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."
- 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...
- 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...
Incidents in the same risk subdomain
- Italian Mediaset Journalist Safiria Leccese's Image Was Reportedly Used in a Purportedly AI-Generated Fake Loan Scam
- Scammers Reportedly Used AI-Cloned Daughter's Voice to Defraud Bay Area Mother in Fake Kidnapping Call
- Guelph, Ontario, Woman Reportedly Lost $14,000 in Purported Deepfake MrBeast Cryptocurrency Scam
- Purportedly AI-Recreated Clips from Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage' Video Reportedly Appeared in FBI Promotional Video Posted by Kash Patel
- Ahmedabad Aadhaar Fraud Racket Reportedly Used Purportedly AI-Generated Deepfakes to Change Businessman's Linked Mobile Number
- ChatGPT Was Reportedly Consulted on Body-Disposal and Concealment Questions Before and After University of South Florida Doctoral Students Were Killed
Source record: incident #912 on the AI Incident Database · all 2 reports