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Chapter 1: What unique approach does Evan use to confront scammers?
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Chapter 2: How does AI voice technology play a role in scamming?
When I first created my voice agent in episode one, I refined it by making a bunch of calls to real customer service lines, like United Airlines and Discover Card. Eventually, I worried I was wasting the representative's time. But then, I thought of another type of person I could use them on. The type of person who calls us wasting our time.
Or worse, trying to trick us into parting with our money. People like Matthew and Isaac from the hospital indemnity plan. Or this guy, Paul. Hey, this is Paul with the Tax Relief Center. I'm following back up on your request regarding our Fresh Start Tax Reduction Program. I didn't make any requests. I have no back taxes, Paul.
Yes, I'm talking about the people who clog your voicemail with offers you don't want and scare your grandma and try to get you to put your life savings into a fake cryptocurrency. I've covered scams large and small for years, and I can tell you that we are living in a golden age of scamming.
Phone scams, texting scams, romance scams, money transfer scams, individual bank accounts drained, goods that never arrived, business fortunes transferred away with a single click. American consumers alone lose more than $8 billion to scams every year, a number that grew 30% from 2021 to 2022. In other words, scamming is big business. Calls like these generally aren't some lone wolf con artist.
They're done on an industrial scale. There are quite literally warehouses in many corners of the globe with hundreds, even thousands of people on headsets. Product specialists on calls all day, every day trying to reel in marks on the other side of the world. A lot of the spam and scam calls we get these days don't even start with people on the other end of the line.
They open up with recordings, which help narrow the pool of victims down to the more likely ones. When you get this message, it's time to act. This is the final attempt to reach you from Fiscal Freedom Initiative. regarding a $36,000 financial hardship loan. This loan can be used... And that's why AI-driven voice agents are the technology that spammers and scammers have been dreaming of.
The tools I've been using to clone my voice and create semi-autonomous voice agents, they're completely public. Anyone can use them. So why wouldn't scammers? Well, they are. Scammers are already using voice cloning to run voice impersonation scams. They take a snippet of someone's voice, clone it, and then use it to call that person's family and say they're in trouble and need money.
You may have heard this called a deepfake or the grandparent scam. Grandparent scams. The so-called grandparent scam. A grandparent scam ring who allegedly stole more than $2 million. The bad guys can now clone a voice using only a couple of seconds worth of actual sound. Maybe just an innocent video you post to TikTok or Instagram.
They can also grab your voice from videos you have up on social media. Keep that in mind. To be honest, I'm not convinced all these cases on the local news where people suspect their grandkids' voices have been cloned are really clones. Some are probably just scammers randomly impersonating kids and hoping they hit the mark.
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Chapter 3: What insights are shared about the psychology of scammers?
It looks like there might be some confusion here.
Okay, because, okay, it is said in the computer here that you are a second place winner. All right, and you will be receiving a total of $5.5 million. All right, and also a brand-new 2024 Mercedes-Benz that is registered under your name. Okay, and I'm also seeing a bonus price for $25,000 every month for the rest of your life.
That's $5.5 million, $25,000 every month for the rest of my life and a Mercedes.
All right. So what I would like to know is, would you like to move forward in getting the information on how you could claim your price?
Wow, that sounds amazing, James. But I think there might be a mix up here. I haven't entered any contest or received any notifications about winning such a prize. It's probably best to clear this up and find the right person who actually won. I like imagining the two of them getting together to track down the real winner. But virtual Evan Ratliff was unpredictable.
The same outfit called again, and this time he was eager to claim the prize. Wow, that sounds like an amazing prize package. Can you provide me with more details on how to claim it?
Okay, what I could do, sir, I could actually tell you to get yourself a clean sheet of paper and a pen so I could give you a number that you can call so you could actually get everything started out for today.
Great. I have my pen and paper ready. Please go ahead and provide me with the number to call to get things started. I have my pen and paper ready. This always cracked me up when this completely virtual entity very confidently lied and said it was doing something in the physical world. Generally speaking, the moral underpinnings of my voice agent seemed pretty flimsy.
Give it enough time and it would say, sure, I'll collect this prize. But then again, were we that different? There were days when I hoped someone would call out of the blue with some pot of unearned money and make all my troubles go away. The voice agent I'd set up at Vappy to receive these calls and return them was designed to be an enthusiast.
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Chapter 4: How does Evan's AI agent interact with real scammers?
It's a common scam where they offer you a discount and then eventually ask for your payment information, which they then use to steal from you. Okay, sure. May I have your name, please? My name is Evan. And yours look good. My zip code is 94530. Okay, let me pull up your account details. Just stay up online with me, please.
Thank you.
Mr. Aiden, may I have your associated phone number to your account? My phone number associated with the account is 555-12345. 555-12345. Yes, that's correct.
But this is not the complete number.
You're right, my apologies. The phone number is 555-123-4567. Okay, so you can take this phone number in your ass and enjoy your day. You can take this phone number in your ass, indeed. Hey, this is Evan, and this is where an ad normally goes in a podcast. There aren't a ton of advertisers, however, who want their ad to run right after you've said you can take that phone number in your ass.
But we've made this show completely independently, so we have the freedom to be told to take a phone number in our ass and not worry about what advertisers think about it. That said, it costs money to make a show like this. So if you like what you're hearing, we hope that you'll go to shellgame.co and support the show. We've got some fun bonus stuff for you there. If you do, shellgame.co.
All right, now back to the show. It was all a kind of dark fun, and I had a fleeting thought about monetizing myself on YouTube. But then something even more interesting happened. My AI voice agents, in their sleepless pursuit of hucksters, started encountering other AI voice agents.
Hello, hey, can you hear me? This is Ash Morgan. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. Well, the purpose of my call is to inform you that the state has recently approved a new final expense whole life insurance plan. What it does, it is going to cover 100% cost of funeral, burial, or cremation.
Hear how Ash Morgan just bulldozes through the conversation? My early agents sometimes behaved in a similar way, particularly if I gave them a script and forgot to stipulate that they wait for responses from the caller.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of AI in the scam industry?
Can you provide me with some information on the program first, and then I can decide if I want to proceed? Okay, so, unfortunately, you do not qualify for the benefits we have. I'm sorry. Oh, that's a bummer. Finally, they worked it out. I have observed that there is always something extra one can get from comparing multiple programs.
Our benefit specialist is on the line and can help you compare benefits among 27 leading insurance companies. So I really recommend that you talk to her and maybe she can help you get food card and grocery card or save you extra money on your premium. Before that, I need to verify, do you have an annual income of less than $50,000? Yes, I do have an annual income of less than $50,000.
Can I sign up for these benefits right away? Okay, so perfect. I think for your income range, we can definitely get you more benefits than you already have and save you more money on premium. Let me just patch you with our benefits department. Please bear with the music for just a second. Imagine a future where AIs are just trying to scam other AIs, day and night.
It sounds dystopian at first, but there's something beautiful about the fact that your phone would never even ring. Listening to my AI voice agent conversing with these other AI voice agents gave me a new idea. I decided to leave the scam baiting to the YouTube professionals. And anyway, the calls were costing me per minute. Just a few bucks, but still, the joke was kind of on me.
My agents had to have a higher purpose than this. To find it, it was time to look inward. I'm married to Sam and we have two kids, Zaley and Juno. They keep me on my toes, that's for sure. How about you? Do you have a family? Yeah, I'm married to Sam and we have two kids, Zaley and Juno. They definitely keep me on my toes, just like your Juno does for you.
Still living that Florida life, you know how it is. I've been doing some writing lately. Florida life, huh? I can almost feel the humidity just thinking about it. Hey, I know this is kind of out of the blue, but have you by any chance stolen my identity? That's next week. A couple of production notes. All of the calls you hear in this series are real.
We have not cut out silences or used audio enhancement to make them sound more realistic. Also, our show is produced independently and we have no relationship, financial or otherwise, with any of the companies mentioned in the show. Shell Game is a show made by humans. It's written and hosted by me, Evan Ratliff. Produced and edited by Sophie Bridges. Samantha Hennig is our executive producer.
Show art by Devin Manny. Our theme song is Me and My Shadow, arranged and performed by Katie Martucci and Devin Yesberger. Hey, Gordon, thanks for getting back to me. I don't recall calling Vanguard Partners, but I'm happy to help you out. Is there something specific you were looking to discuss?
I think we hadn't possibly reached out about wanting to purchase some mineral rights.
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Chapter 6: How do scammers adapt to AI voice technology?
I felt it was what I had to do. Listen to Deep Cover, The Family Man on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.