4d ago

Florida man says his wife ‘wants a divorce’ after he lost $45,000 on an AI-generated Elon Musk car scam

www.independent.co.uk Florida man lost $45,000 on an AI-generated Elon Musk scam

The 69-year-old was reportedly targeted after he posted in a Facebook group advertising Elon Musk car giveaways

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/56223456

George Hendricks, a 69-year-old from Leesburg, a suburb of Orlando, told ClickOrlando he lost $45,000 after a scammer targeted him with a deepfake video of Musk. Deepfakes are digitally-altered videos often used to impersonate notable public figures.
Now, Hendricks tells the outlet that his wife “wants to get a divorce” over the scam.

106 comments

She's right: she lives with a dumbass.
I've never understood this "old people are vulnerable" thing (not to mention that 69 ain't that old): even if the scam is really good, at some point the mark is asked to make a large amount of money flow out of their bank account: anybody with the good sense the good lord gave to donkeys would have alarm bells ringing loudly between their ears. Everybody I've met in my life reacts like that.
I might understand if the scanner impersonates a close family member really well - although if one of my children started asking me large sums of money, I would get suspicious because... well, they just don't. But Elon Musk? That guy ain't a victim, he's a moron.
- You might be surprised about this, but as people age, so do their brains. They do not function as well and sometimes develop serious issues. Stop assuming everyone has the same resources to work with. Protect the vulnerable from bad actors.
  
  As of the time of this reply, 3 people have downvoted you. I cannot fathom reading your message and thinking "Well this guy is clearly wrong! Everybody should be judged equally!"
  How they came to the conclusion to downvote you, I'll never know.
  
  We do protect the vulnerable from bad actors, when anybody tries to make large transfers of money the banks are required to check the validity of the transaction but ultimately if the individual insists what's the bank supposed to do. It's their money.
  There is only so much that it is possible to do, and beyond a certain point you have to accept that scams are either going to happen or just take people's ability to control of their own money away from them, neither are particularly good options.
  
  You make a great point - not all of us have the same capacities and there need to be protections in place to prevent people falling for scams - but I just don’t know where the line is between personal responsibility and collective responsibility. Like, for society to function, we all need to assume some amount of collective responsibility to protect others but that can’t be at 100%. People need to take some amount of personal responsibility for their actions, otherwise we slide towards a society with no learning and no repercussions which is a recipe for disaster and collapse.
  It’s a tenuous relationship, and extremely context-dependent, so I don’t think that there is an objective and quantitative answer to the question. Would make an interesting philosophical/ethical debate though.
  
  And yet we let them vote and run the country.
  We can't even agree to revalidate their driving ability because that would be disrespectful.
  They don't get to have it both ways.
- Avoiding scams is as easy as walking a single step. Yet almost everyone has tripped at least once in their life
  We're exposed to scams all the time, all it takes is falling for one of them. Have a little empathy, because it absolutely could be you one day
  
  It happens to soook many people. Thousands-10s of thousands of people a day. And not all of them are complete idiots, they are just stressed out/worried about some shit in a rush and make a mistake. You get a convincing enough email/text/call whatever and they call the number listed because they are worried someone got into their account.
  Shit, I think I saw an article a couple days ago saying roughly $16 billion dollars were scammed from people in the U.S. like that in 2024 alone.
  Very often the person who got scammed realizes right away but soon as that person that remoted in presses whatever button it's done. If they aren't paying attention, that $5,000 in Apple gift cards was bought with your face ID to verify it, the activation code was grabbed from the email they delete the email and end the call. They immediately redeem the activation code on a random Apple ID they have, and it's a race to use those funds up before the person scammed realizes, gets a hold of Apple, and apple flags the purchase and freezes the account it was activated on.
  Even if all the funds are still on the Apple account and frozen... The person who got scammed won't get that money back I don't believe. Apple profits from that purchase, why would they want to lose that sale. People buy Uber and other such gift cards as well. And not much is done to stop all these people getting scammed
- Old people spent almost all their lives living in a different world, where you could trust and believe in certain things. That world has dissolved just as their brains got too old to adapt to the change. It's hard for everyone to keep up, but for some people it's impossible. My father in law is like that, his smartphone is always full of crap because if he sees a popup advert telling him he needs to install something, he'll do as he's told. He can't tell the difference between an advert and a system message. He grew up in a world where most of the time you could basically trust what people were telling you, especially if it looked official. Modern technology and media has no consideration for such vulnerable people, except for finding ways to exploit them.
- I wasn't with you at first, people age at different rates and cognitive decline comes for us all, but the point you make about Elon Musk is convincing enough.
  I won't pity him but I also hope they catch the theif.
- Once you get into non-standard investments (so not stocks/etfs/CDs/etc.) things get a lot murkier a lot quicker. At some point you are just trusting some person with a lot of money. I mean look at Bernie Maddoff, he was just some guy promising a return on investments.
- It's simple: Boomers grew up in a world where money was handed out for free just for being white. The ideas of hard work, financial responsibility, or the value of a dollar were lost on the whole generation. They don't think twice about sending $25,000 to some random person because that's how they got that money in the first place (50 years ago, which they used to buy their first house (now their fourth rental property)).
  Hope this helps
  
  No they weren't

“My good friend Mr. George, I just want you to listen to what I’m telling you. I promise that you’re going to receive your package.”
I cannot help reading that to myself with a thick Indian accent. Been watching too much Scammer Payback, I guess.
- Do not redeem saar!
- I didn't actually witness, this but one of these scam call centres called my bosses bosses well he was attending a cybersecurity conference. Unfortunately there's no actual video of the event but apparently everyone involved had a good time stringing the idiot along for about 45 minutes.
- I cannot help reading that to myself with a thick Indian accent.
  See, it came to me in the voice of The Music Man.
  "Yessir! Genuine, on-time, serves you wine when you dine. This here's gonna be a package you'll be thrilled to receive. Just 48 hours and its all yours, sign on the dotted line, no that's just fine. Here, here, and here, good sir. You've got excellent penmenship and a smile to match."

Imagine the arrogance of believing that one of the world's richest and most self-centered people has taken time out of their day ...
- Honey, listen. If you'd just watch the ad, he said his brain was in the Cloud. He's omnipresent now. He can talk to any of us.
  Look! Look! I still have the link. Damn, why won't this link work? If you could just see the link, honey. He was talking to me. He said, I'd won and that I was incredibly smart. He said we've been chosen! We don't have to live in this shitty apartment anymore. He's going to take us away with him to Mars!
  HONEY! Come back! I love you and I want to live in the computer on Mars together!
  ...
  Fuck. Well, fine. I guess I'll just go find an AI girlfriend.
  
  AI Girlfriend could do better.

Does the wife want to divorce him because of the money he lost or the fact that he chose a "Musk" product?
- Maybe it's because he's an idiot.
  
  Yeah guaranteed this isn't the first incredibly stupid thing he's done - probably while ignoring the advise of everyone else - but it may be the latest or most expensive.
  
  You dance with the Golden Retriever Boyfriend who brung ya.
- Yes
- Deepfake Musk asked her to have his kids.

Because Elmo is famous for his donations and philanthropy...
- He donates money to himself.
- Half of his grifts is the bait-and-switch.
  Elon's good for 10% of what he promised inside the first hour he promised it. After that, all bets are off.

He’s an idiot…but his wife is also likely a gold digger?
…but at the same time he’s old and shouldn’t be expected to be tech savvy. I’m always worried about the viral nonsense my elderly mom falls for. If mom didn’t have a son like me drilling it into her head that everything is fake…theydve got her money by now.
What don’t understand is why isn’t social media fucking complicit for allowable these ads? Back in the 80s you couldn’t tell a white lie in a TV commercial or else you’d get fined…but YouTube and Facebook aren’t even required to have actual people checking the ads people post on their site?
- I don't see where his wife is a gold digger. According to the article, he's fallen for repeated scams and, the way they work is that once you've fallen for one scam, they sell your information to other scammers as an easy mark. As her spouse, he probably has access to all her money; if they get divorced, she'll at least be able to protect her half of their assets.
  [Notice that it doesn't say his wife wants to leave him, just get divorced.]
  
  I’m just guessing…who knows what her motivation is.
  I commented because of how bad social media is for automating ads.
- his wife is also likely a gold digger?
  Would you stay married to that dumbass? That stupidity is unforgivable.
  
  She married that dumbass in the first place…maybe because he had money shrug.
- I feel like it's not just being tech-savvy though. He seems to lack basic common sense.
  Why would you assume that a free car giveaway would necessitate you paying transfer fees, why wouldn't that have already been pre-arranged. After all it's a Tesla car presumably Tesla the ones who are going to deliver it. Additionally why would the competition be exclusive to a niche Facebook group and not a national campaign. It all just seems very obviously a scam.
  My parents aren't particularly tech savvy and often send me AI garbage but they wouldn't be easy marks because both of them have critical thinking skills, or at least my mother does. But my dad has learnt to do what he's told.
  
  Plenty of giveaways work just like this. Paying the taxes and fees wasnt that common at all up until recently.
  
  I said he was an idiot AND she’s a gold digger.
  She married this dumbass, ffs…she’s probably not cool.
- I dunno. My mom is his age and taught us how to build crystal radios when we were kids for fun. She still does it every few years with the grandkids as they grow up. She's still sharp as a whisk.
  
  She's still sharp as a whisk.
  Whisks are not sharp. Do you mean whip? Or am I missing the joke?
- Cutting someone loose who makes terrible financial decisions is not gold digger behavior. They are likely retired and have limited resources to worry about and he just blew a big chunk of that. This also doesn't speak well of his intelligence overall so maybe this was a long time coming.
  
  Huh. Why would you write this positive back story for her?
  All we know about her is she married this dumbass in the first place and left him because of money.
- Pfft, I would divorce my husband if he fell for a Musk grift, and it has nothing to do with gold digging. It would, however, mean that my husband kept hidden for a long time (which is impressive, I gotta say) just how big of a fucking moron he is and I won't be married to that. And he should be avoiding anything to do with Musk like the plague anyway.
  Also, it would mean that he made the decision to throw away a bunch of money without even talking to me about it (because I would veto the hell out of it), which means he's an asshole.
  Both good reasons to divorce someone imo.
  
  But would you marry an idiot in the first place?
- You don't have to be tech savvy to realise the adage "if it sounds too good to be true...". I would have thought Americans of all people would develop armour against scams. But even a modicum of due diligence like asking relatives, or googling his situation might have protected him.
  I should add that my dad is 80 and housebound and gets scam calls all the time and bats them off like flies so being old is not an excuse.
  
  I said he was stupid. What do you want from me?

This poor woman has been living her entire god damned life with this clown. Poor, poor woman.
Just imagine thinking Elon musk has the time of day to ask you for $7500. Mother fucker makes more than that every minute of his life
Absolute clown shoes, I'm not gonna say he deserved it. But christ on a stick, you're making me define where the line of "deserving" is.
- He makes about that per second, and about $400,000/minute.
  https://www.gobankingrates.com/net-worth/business-people/how-much-elon-musk-makes-in-a-day/
  
  That is absolutely sick. And just in case tone isn't coming across in text, I'm saying that in a negative way.
  
  Haha I purposely used minutes instead of seconds cause I knew I'd get blasted on the Internet if I was wrong with my figures. Minutes was safer

Based on the title, I figured the scam was just that he was basically trying to purchase a vehicle from an illegitimate website and simply didn't receive anything. And if that were the case, I could kind of forgive the victim. But reading the article... the scammers told the victim they won a car, then asked for them to pay for shipping, down payments, and other arbitrary investments. No, I cannot forgive someone who thought Musk was asking strangers for donations.
In the video, obtained by ClickOrlando, an AI-generated, deepfake version of Musk said: “My good friend Mr. George, I just want you to listen to what I’m telling you. I promise that you’re going to receive your package.”
Hendricks was told he had to pay $7,500 in cash for the car’s shipping, which he sent to the scammers. He was also asked to make a $10,000 investment and was promised a $120,000 return, the outlet reports.
After exchanging several messages with the scammers, he says he drained his accounts and sent them nearly $37,000 more.
At one point, Hendricks even told the scammers he was concerned about their requests, the outlet reports. But then, they sent Hendricks another video message, which said: “I’d never take advantage of you or your funds. Trust me with your whole heart. God knows I have no bad intentions.”
- It's kind of worrying that that's all it took to get him to drain his bank account. The Elon Musk deep fake was probably unnecessary, he seems like the type to fall for the very obvious Nigerian Prince scam of old.
  The old saying goes, it's impossible to fool and honest man, and I don't know if that's necessarily true or not, but it's definitely easier to con someone who genuinely thinks it's posable to get something for nothing. People like that tend to not take responsibility for their own lives and think that the world owes them something. People like that are a con man's best friend.

He could've bought an actual EV for that
- i doubt he really wanted that EV,he thought it was making an "investment" for a larger return.

I’m (not) sorry but if you are capable of falling for this scam you are living in an actual fucking dream world and are a danger to the community
In a just world those scammers wouldn’t exist but this guy also wouldn’t recklessly revel in obvious delusions of grandeur

I like to think she's not leaving him because he lost the money. I like to think she's leaving him because he's dumb enough to be the type of person to lose the money.
Like, $45,000? Yeah, it's a huge hit to your bank account. But money comes and goes. At the end of the day, you're still with the guy who never stopped to think.

I've been on a Kitboga binge and the only thing that makes scam AIs better than flesh and blood scammers is that they won't talk over you.
However, I don't think I could get an AI to scream "DO NOT REDEEM!"

And I thought my wife was gullible for nearly falling for a cadburys hamper giveaway scam. But this several orders of gullible worse.

And she s right, i d also unbirth the kids if possiblr
- Just shove em back in there 👌
  
  Roll tide

Good for her.

Who here actually blames her lol

that $45,000 can be used for something useful, like yk covering the tuition fee of a university for a year or to make me travel places.
- hes 69, i doubt hes going to a university in florida. probably retired there for the low taxes,.

But now she can't afford it!

JFC.

Should have divorced him sooner.

So would I.
Edit:
“Scammers know that he is well-known and the richest person in the world, so they use the allure of his success to try and manipulate you with FOMO, the fear of missing out,” Amy Nofziger, director of victim support for the AARP Fraud Watch Network, said in a statement
No. She just doesn't want to disparage the people she represents. The reality is that scammers know that stupid people admire musk.

106 comments