Μake us preferred on Google A new form of phone scam using artificial intelligence is raising concerns among Greek authorities, as criminals use voice recordings to imitate relatives and other trusted people and make fraudulent calls appear genuine.
The Hellenic Police is warning that scammers may first collect personal information and voice recordings before using AI-generated speech to make their schemes more convincing.
Konstantia Dimoglou, a police spokesperson, told ERTnews that criminals can use stolen and digitally processed voice recordings to create new audio that sounds as though it is coming from the person whose voice was captured.
The method is not limited to older people. According to police, people of any age, including children and teenagers, can be targeted. The deception can become particularly convincing when scammers use the voice of a parent, relative or another trusted person.
Police are urging the public to be cautious about where they publish or share audio and video material, as technology now allows both voices and images to be digitally manipulated.
How scammers collect voice samples
One reported case began with a seemingly simple phone call.
A man was contacted and asked whether he was Mr. Socrates. When he answered “yes,” the call ended.
He later received another call from the same number. This time, the callers reportedly gave him a different name and asked questions designed to confirm his identity. He told them that he was not that person and ended the call.
He later realized that the callers may have been trying to establish that the phone number belonged to him and collect information about his identity.
14-year-old girl targeted with cloned voice
The same scam was also used against the man’s 14-year-old daughter, according to her father, who described the incident during the ERTnews program.
The man said he was in a store near his home when he received the initial call. About 10 minutes later, after returning home, he noticed that his daughter was on the phone and taking notes.
The girl told him she had received repeated calls on the family’s landline. The callers claimed to be representatives of HEDNO, Greece’s electricity distribution network operator, and said there was an urgent problem with the home’s electricity supply.
They asked the girl to provide her father’s phone number so they could contact him about the supposed problem.
The callers also asked whether anyone else was at home and whether the family had a pet. The girl said she was alone and told them that the family had a cat.
Her father said the scammers had apparently obtained an earlier recording of his voice. They then played a conversation in which his voice could be heard saying “yes,” creating the impression for his daughter that he had agreed to the requests being made to her.
The incident illustrates how scammers can combine information gathered during seemingly harmless phone calls with AI-generated or manipulated audio to make a fraudulent conversation appear to come from someone the victim knows and trusts.
