ATLANTA — A new wave of online scams driven by AI led consumers to lose almost $1 billion, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s cybercrimes team.
Online shopping is facing a new threat of highly realistic fraudulent websites designed to trick unsuspecting users.
In a matter of minutes or even seconds, criminals can create fake websites that mimic well-known brands. The growing threat means next time families shop online, the websites selling their favorite brands may be fake.
Channel 2’s Tom Regan talked with victims and FBI agents to learn more about their efforts to crack down on this growing cybercrime wave and how AI is supercharging online fraud.
Channel 2 has exposed online crime for years. In 2019, early deep-fake scams used older AI technologies to trick users.
“I know people are going to fall for this because it looked so amazingly real,” corporate trainer John McDowell told Regan then.
In 2019, a Japanese company contacted him saying it had expansion plans for the U.S. after he posted his resume on Indeed. They used a real company’s website; to McDowell, it all seemed real.
“They were very professional,” McDowell said. “I guarantee you this was a guy in Nigeria putting on a fake Japanese accent.”
They offered him a job but told him he first needed to install some software on his computer and spend money. Right then, he knew he was being scammed.
Today, these sophisticated schemes have become easier than ever.
“AI did not invent the problem with fake websites; it just industrialized it,” said Daniel Polk, a special agent with the FBI cybercrimes team.
He says just last year, the FBI created a new index for cybercrimes using AI.
“We had a carve out category for AI specific scams,” Polk said. “This is just what people were reporting, and it was close to a billion dollars.”
Polk says many more crimes go unreported, often because of worries about embarrassment or lack of awareness of what steps to take.
Using cheap or even free AI tools, cyber criminals can now build polished looking retail or corporate websites, complete with pictures of fake people who supposed work for the company or model their merchandise.
The tools let automatically create real company websites in just seconds, complete with a section to enter credit card information.
“It’s not going to be a matter of if consumers are going to face fake websites that they used to trust,” Polk said. “It’s a matter of when.”
Even Mitch Lierman, an investigative producer for WSB-TV, was fooled by a fake website.
He wanted to buy a shirt for an upcoming wedding.
“We thought we saw a brand we recognized,” Lierman said. “It’s a moment you have when you let your guard down.”
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
He went to what he believed was a trusted men’s wear site for a brand he had bought before.
It was actually fake.
They took his money; he never got his shirt; and when he tried to message a consumer help link, nothing happened.
“You’re just trying to do something in a rush, and you catch yourself up a creek,” Lierman said.
“When you google that brand that you’re looking to make a purchase from, don’t click on the promoted link that pops up first,” Polk advised. “We see criminals using services like Google to pay for promoted links that are in fact malicious and designed to link you to a spoofed website.”
The FBI agent said the greatest threats are fake websites and apps posing as investment and banking companies that the victim is already connected to.
“By downloading the app and giving away their information and passwords to websites they are used to, scammers have that information and are able to go to the authentic website and login,” Polk said.
Lierman says next time when he had his friends buy online, they won’t act impulsively.
“We were not really thinking with our head when we were looking at it,” Lierman said. “We thought we were getting a screaming deal, and that’s how they got us.”
To protect yourself from online fraud, the FBI advises using strong passwords and two factor authentication as well as checking URLs and web addresses for domain names that seem strange. Polk said if it seems off, it’s probably fake.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
©2026 Cox Media Group
