By Segun Fatuase
65-year-old Ayo Ojurongbe slumped in a dazed fashion on the settee, mouth flapping like that of a fish gasping for air. Ayo is the latest victim of a grand AI scam which just drained him of millions of naira. All he did was to wire funds to a ‘friend’ for the purchase of office equipment. The shocking reality hit him a few hours later when the real friend called and wondered why he delayed in sending the N12 million as earlier agreed. AI tools were used were used by stealthy individuals who tapped into the wrong end of technology to ‘imitate’’ his friend’s voice. They ‘won’ Ayo’s trust, got his guard down and scaled through conventional security measures to get the better of him. A shocked Ayo simply could not fathom how a con artist could circumvent all conventional methods and trick him. He fell for such a cheap trick after 20 years of avoiding dupes in his business dealings. To his chagrin, he realized that AI technologies are more technical than traditional fraud and the scams are so convincing and very difficult to detect for individuals and businesses alike. He lost heavily for a typical AI scam through a cloned voice!
Reports on the prevalence of AI fraud stated that almost 60 per cent of Nigerian internet users have encountered some form of online scam, with AI playing a leading role in making identity theft, synthetic identity and impersonation more convincing. World Cybercrime Index and even Nairametrics rank Nigeria as number 5 on sources of cybercrime activities, coming behind Russia, which ranked number one, and Ukraine, China, and the United States, which occupied the second, third, and fourth positions respectively. The World Cybercrime Index report which came out of painstaking efforts of researchers of the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, and the University of New South Wales, Canberra, pegged the globe’s major cybercrime hotspots by ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime at a national level. Romania, North Korea, United Kingdom, Brazil, and India were also listed among the top 10 cybercrime hotspots.
Cloning voices and Images has now become the era of fraud powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). This trend of using technical AI tools like Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT etc to create false narratives and dupe people digitally is rapidly spreading and becoming worrisome. AI is now negatively used by any dubious person with an internet connection to create fake content and mercilessly hack into lives and access bank accounts.
No doubt, Artificial intelligence (AI) aids fraud in a frightening manner. Like a second skin, scammers now create fake, synthetic identities and convincing content in a personalized and sophisticated manner which becomes very difficult to detect. Scammers are quite busy on social media, a veritable platform through which they get their victims. They create fake profiles and reach out to potential victims. They mine a trove of information and even nurture a relationship . After hooking their victim, subtle demands for money starts. With the information gathered over a period of time, the scammer impersonates the victim’s family members and friends and make urgent demands for money or some business opportunities. Scammers harp on immediacy of response and cleverly isolate the victim, leaving no room for a third party involvement.
Recently, a Ponzi scheme using the name of an investment platform, China Beijing Equity Exchange (CBEX) was used in Nigeria and other parts of the globe to deceive investors by utilizing AI-generated endorsements and trading bots. Millions fell victim and lost billions in hard currency.
Globally, AI-enabled fraud has now spiked between 2023 and 2025, driven by the increased accessibility and devious usage of generative AI tools. For instance, statistics show that AI-enabled scams increased by 456% between May 2024 and April 2025, compared to the same period in 2023-2024, which itself saw a 78% increase over the previous year. More worrisome is the fate of victims, particularly senior citizens/ Elderly who easily fall prey due to their limited knowledge of IT and digital vulnerability. Seen as ‘Dinosaurs in a Computer age’, scammers seem to have ready victims in Senior Citizens/Elderly.
Senior Citizens/Elderly account for a significant number of millions of vulnerable persons who daily fall prey to scammers in the online, social and professional spheres. Extensively, Scammers now use artificial intelligence (AI) to create more sophisticated, convincing, and personalized schemes to prey on elderly citizens, who often face unique vulnerabilities.
The United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO) peg the age of a senior citizen/ elderly at 60 years. However, sundry factors including social benefit, health care, commercial reasons and retirement depending on individual country and cultural context can peg the age at which a person is considered a senior citizen to 65 years. Interestingly, in advanced countries, the Senior citizens also fall into sub-categories as young-old (60–74), advanced old age (75–84) and very advanced old age (85 and above) .
Generally, scams craftily exploit trust in businesess, organisations and social institutions. As a fake technical support, scammers pose as IT staff of banks, HMOs or multi-national companies advising potential victims that their accounts need revalidation or that their computers have virus. Persuasively, they ask for sensitive information including log in details and sensitive financial data. They also pose as Traffic / Road Safety officials or Social Security workers and confidently demand for personal information and immediate payment for a fine or benefit.
They thrive in haste and immediate response, leaving their potential victim little or no time to put their thoughts together or consult a third party.
Because Senior citizens are mostly isolated and lonely in their sunset years, they become ready victims for scammers who exploit their vulnerability. Scammers trick them by sending codes with the aim of draining their retirement benefits; forming fake relationships through the creation of fake profiles on social media, begging for money for contrived ‘ emergencies’, such as travel, medical bills, or business opportunities.
In Canada and the West, senior citizens are specifically targeted because they have significant retirement savings accounts. There have been many instances reported when life long savings were wiped out by scammers. The trend extends to African countries, including Nigeria where scammers exploit the digital illiteracy of these Seniors/ Elderly to deprive them of their retirement benefits and savings. Sometimes they use the emotional vulnerabilities of these Seniors to sneak into their lives and drain them of their financial comforts.
Scammers, adept at creating false narratives, now come up with personalized, grammatically correct and sophisticated schemes using artificial intelligence (AI) to prey on senior/elderly citizens through predictive targeting (due to their vulnerabilities). These schemes come in form of Voice Cloning (short audio snippets often sourced from social media or voicemails, to create realistic clones of a loved one’s voice, Deepfake videos, AI-Powered Phishing Emails and Messages and emotionally manipulative romance chats/calls etc
Senior citizens are particularly vulnerable to these AI-driven scams because they are less familiar with advanced technologies and the existence of deepfakes/voice cloning.
Senior citizens in Nigeria are often victims because of scammers’ ability to exploit their trust and emotional concern for loved ones. They are also defrauded in business deals that use AI with legitimate-looking emails or text messages from organisations cloning banks, multi-nationals and government agencies through AI scams promising high profit and enticing financial returns on phony investments. The scammers, after establishing a ‘deceptive bond’ with the victim, convince them not to discuss the ‘deal’ with anyone (secrecy), and pressurize them to send the money urgently.
Scammers also use AI to prey on elderly citizens by manipulating images of their children or grandchildren. AI is used to generate or manipulate video content to create convincing fake videos of family members or trusted figures (like a government official). This adds another layer of deception, making the victim believe they are seeing the actual person on a video call. Once the victim is ‘hooked’, the scam is effected.
Senior Citizens/ elderly are obvious targets for sundry reasons, particularly their access to large funds accumulated over a long period. They are also vulnerable due to their trust and emotional concern for loved ones, particularly their grandchildren. More worrisome is their lack of knowledge of advanced technologies, particularly the existence of deepfakes/voice cloning.
AI is used in a manipulative and convincing manner to sustain long, emotional romantic conversations through chatbots . The aim is to gain the victim’s trust and eventually trick them into sending money. Esther Ajayi, a widow living in Isinbode Ekiti, a remote village in Ekiti state, South West Nigeria, was ‘relieved ‘ of her life savings by a cunning character who was aware of her sizeable retirement benefits after she retired to the village. Having lost her husband 15 years ago and with her three children living in different parts of Nigeria, Esther retired to the family’s ‘country’ home in the village, hoping to live quietly, free from the hard-paced Lagos life.
Unfortunately, she fell prey to a scammer who impersonated her childhood lover and through voice cloning convinced her to send money for him to process her travel papers to his base in the UK. She fell for the false narrative because she was lonely and was vulnerable digitally. Scammers, sometimes based in Nigeria or working with Nigerian co-conspirators, build fake online relationships and then invent elaborate stories to ask for money.
Like Esther, many senior citizens, particularly widows and widowers are frequently enmeshed in romance scams. The victims of these scams are often lonely, widowed, or divorced senior citizens , regardless of their age, who are defrauded of their life savings and retirement benefits due to their sparse knowledge and understanding of AI. Scammers, sometimes based in Nigeria or working with Nigerian co-conspirators, build fake online relationships and then invent elaborate stories to ask for money.
Loneliness and living a somewhat isolated life, with no one to consult before making immediate and sometimes hasty decisions, also make senior citizens an easy prey for scammers.
72-year-old George Williams, a widower who lives in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin in the US, thought he was smart until he lost 10,000 dollars in a romance scam. He believed he was dating a Congolese damsel, who made several monetary demands on him before he later discovered that a scam artist was at work. ‘’ I became a Dinosaur in this Computer Age. Some guy made a fool of me,’’ he moaned.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and general cybercrime are sometimes difficult to track mainly due to the fact that many victims are reluctant to “advertise their shame’’. The victims, due to embarrassment and the attendant shame, are reluctant to report their cases to law enforcement agents. Under-reporting cybercrime cases has also made it difficult to tackle the problem.
Law enforcement officers and even the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), with the touted reputation as Africa’s foremost Telecom regulatory agency, are at their wits’ end trying to piece the puzzles together. There is no specific, verified number for the total amount of people in Nigeria scammed specifically by AI. Scammers, to a large extent, simply create fake identities online and peddle their false narratives to vulnerable people, including senior citizens, giving them little or no time to put their thoughts together or consult their friends or children who are not digitally vulnerable.
The safety net right now is for senior citizens who have difficulty in distinguishing between legitimate and fake messages is not to be in any hurry in responding to urgent calls/ messages from anyone claiming to be family member and friends . They should be skeptical of urgent requests and be wary of people who put pressure on them to act quickly. More importantly, Senior citizens should create a family code or phrase to be used during emergency calls to confirm the real identity of anyone making a demand.
They should not share sensitive or personal information including passwords, Social Security numbers, National Identity Number and bank details online, over the phone, through email or text. In addition, senior citizens/ Elderly should not send money to their grandchildren online or be in the habit of giving remote access of their phone/computer to anyone.
*******SENIOR CITIZENS Foundation ……second in the series