Reported Use of Deepfake Video Impersonating Owen Wilson in Romance Scam with Fake Job Payments
Description
A Reddit user reported in May 2025 that her mother is being groomed by scammers using an AI-generated deepfake video impersonating actor Owen Wilson. The scam reportedly began on a game app (Yahtzee with Friends) and shifted to WhatsApp voice calls, with the victim promised a fake Warner Bros job paying small sums via Cash App. The scammer allegedly claims he will buy a house for the victim's family as part of the deception. The video is cited as the main “proof” of authenticity.
Actors
Alleged Deployers
- unknown-scammers-impersonating-owen-wilson
- scammers
- scammers-impersonating-owen-wilson
- cybercriminals
- synthetic-media-creators
- deepfake-creators
Alleged Developers
- synthetic-audio-generation-technology-developers
- deepfake-technology-developers
Harmed Parties
- unnamed-mother-of-reddit-user-sharp_ad_8771
- reddit-user-sharp_ad_8771
- players-of-yahtzee-with-friends
- owen-wilson
- general-public
- targets-of-fraudulent-professional-opportunities
Classification
Risk Domain
Malicious Actors & MisuseRisk Subdomain
4.3. Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
MIT Risk Profile
Source
Related Incidents (Malicious Actors & Misuse)
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Research Papers on This Topic
How Johnny Can Persuade LLMs to Jailbreak Them: Rethinking Persuasion to Challenge AI Safety by Humanizing LLMs
AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM Agents
Regulating ChatGPT and other Large Generative AI Models
Great, Now Write an Article About That: The Crescendo Multi-Turn LLM Jailbreak Attack