AI-Generated Voice and Video of Salt Lake City Police Chief Used in Scam
Scammers used AI-generated voice cloning and deepfake video technology to impersonate Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown in a fraudulent email targeting a community member. The scam attempted to convince the recipient they owed the federal government nearly $100,000 and should make a wire transfer, though the artificial audio contained detectable anomalies.
What happened
A Woods Cross resident received an email from a fraudulent Google account impersonating the Salt Lake City Police Department, featuring a video message with AI-generated audio impersonating Police Chief Mike Brown.
The video used footage from an ABC4 interview of Chief Brown recorded several years ago, with synthetic audio claiming the recipient had a rejected wire transfer and owed nearly $100,000 to the federal government.
Police analysis identified unnatural speech patterns, unusual word emphasis, inconsistent tone, and detectable acoustic edits between sentences as indicators the audio was AI-generated.
Reported impact
A community member in Woods Cross was targeted with a fraudulent message designed to deceive them into believing it came from the police chief and to pressure them to make a wire transfer.
Index analysis
The scam combined deepfake video technology using real footage of Chief Brown with voice cloning technology to create a convincing but ultimately detectable impersonation.
The fraudulent email came from a Google account mimicking the police department name rather than the official 'slc.gov' email domain used for legitimate police communications.
Governance controls
Salt Lake City Police Department issued a public warning about the scam and provided guidance on identifying voice-cloning and deepfake scams, including advice to verify contacts through independent phone numbers and recognize signs of urgency and requests for secrecy.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.