Ask an AI "Is this a scam?" before you send money
ABC7 reported that a San Jose widow in her 70s, after months of an online romance, asked ChatGPT about a demand for another $1 million to unfreeze a supposed crypto account. ChatGPT told her it was a scam and to go to the police, but by then she had already lost nearly $1 million.
What they did
A man she met on Facebook moved their chats to WhatsApp and steered her into a fake trading platform. When the account "froze" and he demanded more money to release it, she described the situation to ChatGPT.
How it went
ChatGPT's answer made her stop paying, confront him, and go to the police. Investigators traced the money to a bank in Malaysia. Per the report, the earlier losses were not recovered.
Worth knowing
Ask early, before the first payment. Warning signs include an online-only romance, investment "coaching," secrecy, and having to pay to release money. Call your bank using the number on your card and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Never paste account numbers or passwords into a chat.
Try it yourself
Copy this into ChatGPT (or any AI assistant). Replace the parts in [brackets] with your own details.
Someone I've only met online is asking me to [what they want, e.g., send money, buy gift cards, invest, pay a fee to release funds]. Here's what has happened so far: [describe it, without account numbers or passwords]. Does this match known scam patterns? List each red flag you see, what a legitimate person or company would do instead, and exactly who I should contact to check, using phone numbers I look up myself, not ones they gave me.
Source: Reported by Stephanie Sierra, ABC7 San Francisco, Dec 5, 2025. Read the original →
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