A well-known face to Global BC viewers is speaking out about how he almost fell victim to a sophisticated AI scam.
Business analyst Michael Campbell said it all started a few weeks ago when he received an email from Amazon, saying they were going to call him in the next hour and someone asked him if he had recently bought a gift card.
Campbell said no, he had not.
“About an hour later, I get a phone call and they said they were with my bank and they asked me if I made this series of purchases. I said ‘no’,” Campbell told Global News.
He said the person on the phone then transferred him to the fraud department.
“The investigator says, ‘well, we’ve had a huge amount of fraud, and we’re worried that it’s got something to do with the bank and personnel, and the bank is giving personal information’,” Campbell said.
He added that the person on the phone asked him if he had tried to transfer $10,000 and when he said ‘no’ they asked him to continue with the transfer so they can find out who is scamming him and ‘nail’ the person.
Campbell said he saw $10,000 appear in his chequing account but when he tried to transfer it, at the request of the person on the phone, it did not go through.
“He at this time, he’s giving me a number to phone back and an extension,” Campbell said.
“I phoned back and it’s the bank’s phone number and the bank is answering and it’s a familiar on-hold music to me. I get a hold of the guy and he says, ‘Well, you’ve got to try this again. You know, we want to catch these people.’”
Campbell said that is when he decided to go to the bank branch in person.
“That was probably the first, maybe the one of only two good moves I made,” he said.
Campbell said the person on the phone had told him not to tell anyone at the bank but he decided to go ahead and try to figure it out.
He suspects that his voice may have been cloned in an earlier call to the bank to initiate this scam.
“I was told this, that somebody here may be involved, and they had received a call from me, which I hadn’t made,” Campbell said.
“The bank had got a call from me. Of course it wasn’t me. And it must have triggered all sorts of alarms with the bank fraud department.”
Campbell said the assistant branch manager told him this is a scam and it’s a scam they see about twice a week.
“It was a lot of lessons for me,” he said.
“You know, it first of all, happens to anyone. The sophistication was impressive. The use of artificial intelligence can do voice cloning, you know, if they need to.”
Campbell said the scammers even knew what background music the bank played when someone was on hold.
“It’s out of the blue,” he said.
“You feel violated, as anyone who had experienced this would, and I had to change my credit cards, of course, had to report to one of the credit agencies (saying ) I think someone may be phoning in, trying to impersonate me. And maybe they want a new credit card, you know, in my name.”
Simone Lis, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau, said if something seems wrong or weird, listen to that ‘voice’.
“The advice is to also listen to your gut instinct,” she said.
“If you are not sure, talk to someone, talk to the Better Business Bureau, talk to the Canadian anti-fraud centre and we can help you really make an informed decision.”
The Competition Bureau of Canada said Canadians lost more than $638 million to fraud in 2024 and only five to 10 per cent of losses are reported.