Scammers Use AI to Make Lost Pet Scams More Believable
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bill and Allison are devoted to their dogs, so when they discover their 11-year-old beagle mix Archer missing one evening, they are distraught. They spend hours searching the neighborhood and start putting out alerts online, including their contact information and photos of Archer. Then a late-night call comes in from someone claiming to be from a veterinarian's office. Archer has been hit by a car and needs emergency surgery to prevent him from becoming permanently paralyzed. The surgery will cost $2,746 and needs to be paid before the doctor can start. The scammers even send a convincing photo of Archer on the operating table, but Bill and Allison quickly suspect the photo might be AI-generated.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on the perfect scam. |
| 0:04.5 | About 12.30, we get a phone call that says, we think we made a phone on your dog. |
| 0:10.0 | He's been hit by a car and they need to do emergency surgery on him. |
| 0:15.2 | And they said, can we just get a picture to make sure it's him? |
| 0:19.0 | In about 30 seconds, we have a picture. |
| 0:21.6 | And at first glance, it's our turn. |
| 0:23.6 | He's laying on a operating table. |
| 0:27.6 | There's two vets standing over him with his surgical masks, ready to operate. |
| 0:36.6 | Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. We keep telling you that artificial |
| 0:46.5 | intelligence will be a boon for criminals. And it seems like each week brings a new hint that this future is, |
| 0:56.4 | well, it's arriving fast. |
| 1:01.0 | In a little while, we'll talk to a Harvard scholar who tracks AI incidents, |
| 1:03.5 | a kind of police blotter for artificial intelligence. |
| 1:10.0 | But first, you'll hear an incredible dark story of a scam that seems tailor-made for AI. |
| 1:16.2 | And as our Harvard scholar says, when you hear what happened, you'll say, of course. |
| 1:18.3 | Now, that's another thing we have to worry about. |
| 1:21.3 | Our story begins with Archer. |
| 1:24.0 | Yeah, he's 11. |
| 1:28.2 | We got him from the Volusia County Humane Society over in New Swarna Beach 10 years ago. A little over two. Oh, wow. Yeah. |
| 1:33.7 | Archer is a beagle mix, a dog. And that's the voice of Bill Cousins, who lives in Florida, |
| 1:39.3 | about halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach. |
| 1:45.1 | So, yeah, and they thought he was about one years old when we got him. |
... |
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