Garland police are urging residents across the Dallas-Fort Worth area to stay vigilant as scammers increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to craft more convincing and dangerous fraud schemes.
Officer Matthew Pesta with the Garland Police Department says AI is now being used to generate fake emails, images, videos and even realistic human voices designed to deceive victims into surrendering personal information or money. Pesta said he has personally received AI-generated scam emails impersonating major companies including iCloud and Coinbase.
The technology allows criminals to clone voices with selectable dialects, tones and emotional inflections making it difficult to distinguish a scam call from a legitimate one. Chatbots powered by AI are also enabling scammers to hold more convincing back-and-forth conversations with potential victims.
Fraudulent emails typically direct targets to click embedded links that lead to fake login pages designed to harvest usernames and passwords. Once credentials are captured scammers gain full access to the victim’s accounts.
Despite the increasingly sophisticated tools being used many of the warning signs remain consistent. Pesta says red flags include a strong sense of urgency pressure to use specific payment methods requests to keep communication secret and callers falsely claiming to represent law enforcement agencies.
The FBI reported nearly $21 billion in fraud losses across the United States in 2025. Pesta noted that many of these operations are run by organized criminal networks often based overseas which makes prosecution and recovery of stolen funds extremely difficult.
Pesta is now actively working to educate the Garland community on how to identify and respond to AI-driven scams. His primary advice is to slow down and resist pressure tactics before taking any action.
Residents who believe they have been targeted by a scam are encouraged to report the incident to local police and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.