Urgent emails, text messages, and calls offering guaranteed big returns on crypto or stock offerings are flooding phones with scary messages, pushing people to move their money to protect it.
These messages often try to get targets to buy shares of gold or other precious metals, claiming they are the only safe investment in troubled economic times.
This flood of AI-generated scams tries to trick people into believing legitimate investment firms are approaching them.
These messages are more likely to be deep fakes created by overseas criminal gangs impersonating real companies.
"You can probably pay $20 a month or even less than that with open-source tools, uh, and basically impersonate everyone in the world these days. And so the rise of AI has been one of the reasons for the rise of the deep fake scams," Ron Kerbs of Kidas said.
The messages raise red flags for cautious investor Mindi Salvino. 2 News Oklahoma visited with her at a sidewalk café in Jenks.
"If you know that you want to invest in crypto or you know you want to invest in stocks, I would research the company and reach out to them and take the first step initially yourself, so you know who you're working with. I would never work with anybody who contacted me," Salvino said.
Salvino told 2 News she also protects herself by diversifying her investments and ignoring unsolicited contact.
"I wouldn't put, number one, all of your eggs in one basket, and I wouldn't do it with anybody that calls you or reaches out to you. Any company that reaches out is probably, is likely to be a scam," Salvino said.
Legitimate companies do advertise through calls, texts, and emails. To protect yourself, verify who is approaching you before investing with any company. You can check the company's website by searching for it on Google. Don't just click on a link in any unsolicited message. Doing so could expose your device to malware or direct you to a phony site designed to look like a real company.
Other precautions that could protect your wallet and information — if investment ads promise "guaranteed" big returns that sound too good to be true, or if you are being rushed to provide personal or financial information to get in on a deal, step back and reconsider. These are classic tactics scammers use to trick you.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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