Mexico arrests ex-official in AI voice-cloning scam

Mexican authorities arrested a former Michoacan state treasurer and several relatives on suspicion of using AI-cloned voices to extort judges, governors and presidential office employees, the security ministry said Thursday.

The ministry did not name the suspects. Mexican media identified the former treasurer as Luis Miranda Contreras and reported that he had previously been convicted of embezzlement.

The ministry said the former official, his wife, children and a bodyguard were suspected of running a scheme that obtained “substantial amounts of money” since 2021. It said the group impersonated Supreme Court justices, governors, mayors and public servants from the president’s office, using AI to mimic the voices of political or economic figures.

Investigators described a two-part method in which someone posing as an assistant would ask for a victim’s personal phone number before a person pretending to be the official called and requested money, a government job for a relative or a business contract for an associate.

The FBI said last month that AI-enabled scams, often involving someone imitating a victim’s relative, had cost Americans about $890 million in the United States.