AI Cloned a Florida Sheriff's Voice. The Scam Fooled Callers.

The calls sounded official. The voice belonged to Captain Steve Moser of the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. So did the photo attached to the message. Neither came from him.

Scammers used AI to clone Captain Moser's voice and paired it with his real photograph to build a fake authority figure who could demand money without raising suspicion. Recipients heard a credible law enforcement officer explain that they had missed jury duty or that a warrant had been issued in their name. The fix, the voice said, was simple: pay now, often in cryptocurrency, and the problem goes away.

By mid-October 2026, the Osceola County Sheriff's Office had recorded roughly 40 law enforcement impersonation cases for the year and issued public warnings. The scam works because it layers real details, an actual name, a real face, a cloned voice, over a fake threat.

How the Con Works

The formula is straightforward. Start with a public figure whose name and face are findable online. Feed recordings of that person's voice into AI software that can reproduce it. Attach a real photo. Send voicemails at scale. The caller ID may show a number that looks local or official.

The pressure tactic is a courthouse classic: you are already in trouble, time is short, and the only way out costs money. Cryptocurrency payments are favored because they move fast and cannot be reversed. Victims who call back on the number provided may reach another scammer playing a different role in the same scheme.

If you receive a call like this, hang up. Call the sheriff's office or agency back on a number you find yourself, from their official website or a local directory. Reaching a legitimate-sounding person does not prove the original call was real. Real law enforcement agencies do not demand payment over the phone to resolve warrants or missed jury duty.

The Problem with Familiar Voices

AI can clone a public official's voice from recordings freely available online and attach a real photo. What it cannot do is produce a private three-word code that you and a trusted contact set up in advance. Trust Onion gives anyone that kind of check: a rotating codeword challenge that works on a phone call and cannot be faked by a voice clone or a stolen photo. If someone calls claiming to represent anyone you need to trust, a simple "what are the words?" ends the uncertainty in seconds.

The Osceola County Sheriff's Office is urging anyone who receives one of these calls to report it to local authorities and not to send money. Captain Moser's name and voice were used without his knowledge or consent, and the real department will not ask for payment over the phone under any circumstances.

The same software that cloned one captain's voice is already being pointed at other public figures' recordings. The tool is cheap, the audio is plentiful, and the only thing standing between a convincing fake and a transferred payment is whether the person on the other end of the call knows to ask a question the clone cannot answer.

A controlled voice-cloning safety demonstration

Try our tool to see just how easy voice cloning is. This controlled safety demonstration exists only to show how easy voice cloning is and to make the risk tangible. It is not a real incident or proof of anyone's identity. Your submitted sample is handled transiently to generate the fixed demonstration audio. Trust Onion does not identify you or the person from the sample, and does not keep the submitted recording or generated audio. The temporary voice clone is deleted from our voice provider as soon as the demo finishes; if that deletion fails, it is retried automatically until the provider confirms it.