Artificial intelligence is making an old business scam much more convincing.

For years, businesses have been warned about fraudulent emails directing employees to wire money or change a vendor’s payment instructions. AI now gives criminals another tool: the ability to create realistic voices, images and videos that appear to come from a business owner, executive, customer, or vendor.

The result is an important change in fraud prevention: hearing or even seeing the person giving an instruction may no longer establish that the instruction is genuine.

A Call From the Boss

Consider this scenario: An employee receives an urgent call from the company’s owner directing the employee to wire $85,000 for a confidential transaction. The employee recognizes the owner’s voice. An email with wire instructions immediately follows.

The employee sends the money.

There is only one problem: the owner never made the call. This is no longer merely hypothetical. The Federal Trade Commission reports that scammers have used AI voice-cloning technology to impersonate business executives to obtain money or valuable information. The FBI likewise warns that criminals are using generative AI to create convincing text, images, audio and video to facilitate financial fraud.

New Jersey authorities have also recognized the risk. In November 2025, New Jersey’s Attorney General joined a multistate letter stating that authorities were seeing scams powered by AI-generated deepfakes and voice clones.

Why Businesses Should Pay Attention

AI enhances an already costly problem: Business Email Compromise (BEC). The FBI’s 2025 IC3 Annual Report shows that the threat remains substantial. IC3 received 24,768 BEC complaints involving approximately $3.05 billion in reported losses during 2025. The same report recorded more than 22,000 complaints containing AI-related information, with adjusted losses exceeding $893 million.

The report directly connects AI to business payment fraud: it explains that chat generators can create official-sounding messages mimicking a company’s CEO, while voice cloning can be used to request wire payments. Businesses reported more than $30 million in 2025 losses from BEC scams involving AI.

AI can make these schemes more difficult to recognize by eliminating some of the warning signs businesses traditionally rely upon—poor grammar, unusual wording, an unfamiliar voice or an obviously manipulated image.

What Businesses Should Do

The most effective first step may not require sophisticated technology. It requires good procedures. Businesses should consider:

1. Independently verify changes in payment instructions. Never rely solely on an email, telephone number, or link contained in the communication requesting the change. Contact the vendor or other recipient using previously verified contact information.

2. Require additional approval for significant payments. Consider requiring two authorized individuals to approve substantial or unusual wires and other transfers.

3. Verify unusual requests through a second channel. An urgent telephone call from the owner should not, by itself, override established payment procedures.

4. Train employees about AI impersonation. Employees responsible for money, confidential information or account credentials should understand that a familiar voice or recognizable face may be fabricated.

5. Treat urgency as a warning sign. Instructions such as “send this immediately,” “don’t call the vendor,” or “this is confidential” should increase scrutiny, not eliminate normal safeguards.

The FBI specifically recommends independently verifying requests involving account information and using secondary channels or other authentication methods.

The FTC also cautions that there is no single technological solution to AI-enabled voice cloning. That makes internal procedures and independent verification particularly important.

If the Money Has Already Been Sent, Act immediately.

The FBI recommends immediately contacting the financial institution involved and requesting that it contact the institution receiving the funds. The incident should also be promptly reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Speed can be important to efforts to recover transferred funds.

The Bottom Line

Businesses can no longer assume that an email address, familiar voice or even a recognizable face on a screen proves who is giving an instruction.

The better approach is to assume that important communications can be convincingly fabricated and establish procedures accordingly. For many businesses, one simple rule can provide significant protection:

Before changing payment instructions or making an unusual transfer, independently verify the request.

If you have questions about AI and its impact on your business, please contact one of the attorneys in our Business Law Group.

The foregoing is not intended, and should not be construed as, legal advice or guidance or an offer to provide legal services by Laddey, Clark & Ryan, LLP. The contents of this communication is for informational purposes only and should not be relied on, or considered, in making any decisions or taking any actions. If you wish to inquire about legal services, please contact Laddey, Clark & Ryan, LLP, at lcr@lcrlaw.com.