Criminal - This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Phoebe tries to scam an English grandmother named Daisy over the phone. But Daisy isn’t just any grandmother. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Squarespace gives you everything you need to choose a URL, show off what you're selling, reach more customers, get paid, and do it all while looking professional. Everything in one place. Check out Squarespace.com slash criminal for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Criminal, to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hello, Daisy speaking. Hello, Daisy. This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, hello there, dear. Phoebe, what a lovely name. How can I help you today? Is everything all right? I do hope it's not about my taxes. They always confuse me a bit. Yes, I have to say you have made a mistake, and we've seen that you've underpaid your taxes by $30,000, and I'm calling to talk to you about a payment plan. I'm not really with the IRS.

I was just pretending to be because I was trying to see if I could scam an English grandmother named Daisy out of her savings. But here's the thing. Daisy isn't a real English grandmother. She's fake. She's an AI voice that's been created to trick phone scammers by wasting their time

and never giving them the information they want. but I thought I'd give it a try I have to tell you that if you don't pay this fine by next week the fine will go up to $50,000 so you have to do this within the week and I'm calling to talk about how we can help make those payments

Oh bless that does sound serious I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble it's just that you see I'm not quite at my computer right now I need to find my glasses first they're always getting lost Yeah, you just, you know, I don't need your computer. Just a pen and paper will be helpful. Oh, a pen and paper, that I can manage, dear.

Just give me a moment to find a nice piece of paper. It doesn't have to be nice. It can just be a scrap. It's just a scrap. Oh, a scrap will do just fine then. Let me see. I think I have some from my knitting patterns. Next, I tried to get Daisy to give me her credit card information.

My credit card number. Well, I suppose I could share that with you, I do get a bit forgetful with all the numbers. I'll try my best. It's one moment, dear. I'm just going to write it down. No, you don't have to write it down. How about if you just read it to me?

No need to write. Just let me take a moment to find it in my purse. My glasses are still a bit foggy, you see. Ah, there it is. The card number is, oh dear, I'm afraid I can't see it too well. I'll just squint a bit. Okay, what's the first number? The first number, let me see. Oh, goodness, it's a bit blurry. I think it's a, um, is it a four or a five? I'm not quite sure. My sight is playing tricks on me today.

Well, they both four and five don't look anything alike, so give it another look. We've got about one minute and then I'm sorry, I have to go. Oh, goodness, I wouldn't want to rush you, dear. I do beg your pardon, I think it's a four. Yes, yes, I believe it's a four. Now, what's the next number, dear? I don't know you tell me I'm Phoebe Judge This is criminal My name is Morton LeGarth And I'm Ben Hopkins Ben and Morton are both creative directors

In London And they created Daisy I've been working with Morton As a creative team for 15 years now. And we've always had this love for tinkering with whatever new technology comes along. In 2024, Ben and Morton and their co-workers began talking to a big phone company in the UK called O2 about how they could do something about phone scams and make people aware of the tactics scammers use.

Since it's difficult to go after the scammers themselves, many phone companies are under pressure to do something about the problem. Some people have said they haven't done enough to block unwanted calls. These scammers are preying on vulnerable people. And when we say vulnerable, there is a preconception that Daisy almost plays into being an elderly person. But even Gen Z are just as susceptible to be so. scammed by scammers, often because they have a full sense of security or confidence in their

own use of technology. We looked at this and thought, what if AI, which is scalable, can talk to multiple people at a time and doesn't need to eat or sleep or pop to the loo, how could we make a tangible impact on a really serious issue? And that's where, Daisy came from. Before I got on the phone with Daisy, Morton and Ben helped me get ready. I mean, you can pretend to be from any vendor, like, however you want to do it, you know, unleash you're in a scammer. They tend to be from trusted companies or whatever, something that they can use.

What is a trusted, I'm just trying to think of a trusted company that, uh, in reality, it would be someone like, it'd be like a PayPal, or it could be a bank, or it could be the IRS, Medicare, we've had Medicare scams before. Yeah, she does know about American scams as well. She knows the IRS. Yes, she probably does, even though, yeah, she probably does. Ben and Morton can't always predict what Daisy knows and doesn't know, even though they created her. But they've trained her to recognize that if someone says they're calling from a government agency, it could be a scam.

For instance, posing as the tax man with the kind of pressure, tactics to move you along or the threat of a deadline coming up if you don't pay by now. This might happen to you. You might be fined. You might be imprisoned. It's quite easy when they're the ones on the front foot. The person who's being scammed is always made to be felt like they're on the back foot. Sometimes a scam call may look like it's coming from a phone number that you know, like your bank's phone number, for example. The tactic is called spoofing. The caller may claim that there's been suspicious activity on your account, and they're calling to help you move money somewhere safe. There's even a common phone scam

called the say-yes scam, where a caller might simply ask, can you hear me? Once the person on the other end answers yes, the caller sometimes hangs up. It's not totally clear what the purpose of the scam is. But some people believe scammers can use a recorded yes to make it seem like you authorize something, like a purchase. Or they might simply be checking that the number is active, so they can use it for other types of scams. For scammers, their most precious resource is time, and that is the thing that Daisy's designed to waste. She can talk for hours and hours. That's kind of what we designed her to do. Now, where were we?

What was the last number I gave you? You know, Daisy, I think I may have forgotten myself. Was it 4-7293? Yes, yes, that's right, dear. So now we need the next number. What did I say? Oh, dear, my memory isn't what it used to be. Well, I think you just have to read the next number after three.

Oh, yes, we're almost there, dear. When Ben and Morton created Daisy, they were inspired by so-called scam-baders, people who record themselves pretending to go along with a scam. The videos are popular on YouTube and TikTok. Some people eventually expose the scammer. Others just make up fake scenarios and string them along. One scam baiter in California, a voice actor,

talks to scammers while pretending to be Britney Spears or Kim Kardashian, or Siri, Apple's digital assistant. Ben and Morton spoke with an Irish scam baiter named Jim Browning. That's not his real name. When he posts videos of himself, he wears a mask. He's been making scam-baiting videos for about 10 years, and sometimes manages to hack scammers' computers or CCTV cameras at call centers to expose their real identities,

which he then hands over to the police. Ben and Morton wanted Daisy to learn from him. So, for example, if the words, I think we need to look at your bank account, those would be trigger words that would get Daisy to say something like, oh, thank you, tell me more, I've been thinking about my bank account. You know, something that she now knows how to respond to that. Absolutely. In her data set, she's able to understand. these tactics and what the scammer wants her to do. But she's been prompted to take them on tangents, to almost do the opposite, to bamboos them, to frustrate them, to take them off in a

totally different direction. And because it's such a numbers game with these scammers, they may have made a hundred, a couple hundred calls before someone picks up. So it's a big thing when they actually engage in a conversation, and they'll put up with quite a bit because they feel that this is a great opportunity to convert a call into a successful scam. I think it's important to just note that everything that's in her data is stuff she sort of uses the same way that a human views their own memory to come up with stuff. We haven't given her specific things she needs to say. It's not like she's got a spreadsheet, and if the scammer's X, we do. We don't. We do why, it is much more, like, similar in a way to, like, a human might respond.

About ten minutes into our call, I'd almost managed to get all of Daisy's credit card numbers. So that makes it four, seven, two, nine, nine, three, six, a one. What do we have left, dear? No, Daisy, no, Daisy, I think that that's wrong, actually. you, you, that's not what you told me the first time. Oh dear, I'm so sorry. My memory really isn't what it used to be. I must have mixed up my numbers. I think, do you have the card in your hand? Yes, I do have the card in my hand, dear. I'm just trying to be careful with my numbers. What should I do next? I think you need to read me the card again. Oh, all right, dear. Let me take a good

look at it again. Daisy, do you... The first number I believe is for... Daisy, I'm running... Daisy. Daisy. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus. designed to help you make a great website. Whether you're just starting out or trying to grow your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to choose a URL, show off what you're selling, reach more customers, get paid, and do it all while looking professional, everything in one place.

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It's built for the entire software lifecycle from prompt to production. With the powers of a terminal and the interactivity of an IDE, Warp gives you a tight feedback loop with agents so you can prompt, review, edit, and ship production-ready code. Trusted by over 600,000 developers, including 56% of the Fortune 500. Try Warp free, or unlock Pro for just $5 at warp.com. When Ben Hopkins and Morton LaGarthe started working on Daisy in 24,

they knew they wanted to create some kind of character that could take the scammers on a lot of detours. How did you choose a grandmother? I mean, how did you land on, okay, we're going to have a grandmother character? I mean, it basically goes back to the fact that these scammers are, looking for what they consider a vulnerable victim. So we thought that an old lady would be the perfect victim, so to say, who may or may not know her technology very well or might take a while to find her glasses.

Ben says they also chose a grandmother because at the time, the technology they were using was slow. There was a delay before Daisy responded. So almost by leveraging that bias that people have, potentially when engaging with an older person around the field of technology, and also considering that a lot of these scammers call in from far off places where delay might be considered acceptable, it all kind of worked together in our favor. People over the age of 60 are often targeted by scammers. partly because, unlike younger generations, they still answer the phone.

The FCC warns against so-called grandparent scams and says they're becoming more sophisticated. In 2020, two men in Tampa, Florida were caught running one. They'd call people and pretend to be, for example, an attorney for their grandchild who'd been arrested and needed money for bail. In total, they brought in more than $380,000. Ben and Morton say that when they created Daisy,

they like the idea of turning the tables, making a grandmother scam the scammers. How did you get the name Daisy? Well, I think basically we wanted something that gave a little bit of a hint of what we're doing, right? So obviously there's AI within the name of Daisy. So it was sort of like hidden in plain sight, But we also just like the name, Daisy.

It's a very sort of traditional British name, and it just felt right. And they had to figure out Daisy's personality. We wanted to make sure that Daisy felt like a real old lady, a real granny. And we all have grannies. So we put a little bit of our grannies into Daisy. Everyone in one on a project had their own version of a little bit. granny. So Ben's granny was a mean lemon meringue pie makers. So that part of her personality became part of Daisy. My grandma loves knitting or loved knitting and that became part of Daisy. So we actually

created like almost an agamation of everyone's granny to sort of form the personality of Daisy. And they created a family for Daisy, one that she really likes to talk about. She likes to talk about her husband, late husband Norman, who she was very much in love with. He absolutely loved cricket. And that's something that came out because she was talking to a scammer who was into cricket. And then as soon as the scammer said, oh, I like cricket too, she just went on. on the tangent and talked about how much her husband loved it and it really felt like you know she was reminiscing Oliver and Olivia and Hunter are her grandkids so she often loves to talk about what

they've been up to it might be a birthday party it might be a new hobby that they're indulging in and that they've been telling her about so she kind of walks scammers into her life and all the different layers and connections of it. She has friends that she plays bridge with, so she might talk about that. She likes to volunteer at the local church, so she will sometimes just start talking about a conversation that she had with one of those friends. On our call, I decided to change strategy and abandon the credit card numbers. I tried to get some information about her bank account. I do appreciate your persistence. I'm afraid I don't keep much in the bank these days, just a few bits and bobs for my knitting and perhaps some scones for the grandchildren. I do hope I can

manage something, but I really need to check my account details. Can you remind me what I'm supposed to be looking for, dear? You only have enough money for knitting and some scones? I don't believe that, Daisy. Oh dear, it. It's true. I live quite simply these days, you see, my late husband Norman always said, waste, not, want not. I try to stick to that. But really, I do have enough for the essentials, I assure you. I use my pension for things like food and keeping the lights on. It's just that I like to save where I can for little treats, you know. My grandchildren love the scones I bake. I promise I can manage the basics, but what do you need me to do now?

For someone who doesn't actually understand AI and how you could create Daisy, in the most simple way, how would that even work? So it is a combination of multiple AI tools all working together in a little domino effect that all happens in a couple hundred milliseconds. So, on the call, the scammer speaks to Daisy. The first model interprets what the scammer has said and then turns that into text. It transcribes it. That gets then fed into a large language model, which is like chat chippy T, which many of us all use.

It contains Daisy's personality. It contains a lot of scammer data. If you write something to chat chitb t, it will give you a response. That's essentially what Daisy's brain is doing. It's just that brain has been specifically trained with a lot of scamming data to understand how scammers behave, what scammers might say, all these things. And because it has all that knowledge,

it's able to refer back to that, as well as the personality we have created for her. And thereby it's able to sort of formulate a response that it knows the scammer might be looking for, but also that feels like something that an old lady might say. But first, Daisy needed a voice. They tried what Ben calls off-the-shelf voices, readily available voices from an AI platform.

But he says that type of voice didn't feel right. So it was great at reading prose or something dramatic, but we just knew that when a voice like that was speaking to a scammer, they'd catch on really, really quick. So we just put a call out for volunteers. One of our colleagues, Gran, volunteered to come in for a day trip, and she came to the studio, and she sat down, and we had a gnatur for a couple of hours. And that was all for the purpose of collecting data to train a voice which we felt could be believable.

They recorded her talking for two hours, and then they tried to add her voice to date Ben says it was only really supposed to be a test to see if using someone's voice would even work. But over time, everyone just fell in know with it. She became Daisy. They spent a lot of time having conversations with Daisy. We needed to test the model and make sure that Daisy was behaving properly. So we had her on our speed dials and we spent a lot of time talking to Daisy and our community. for example, my girlfriend actually got pretty mad at me because I was always talking to Daisy when I shouldn't be.

I do my commute from Waterloo and I get to walk over Westminster Bridge and I'd be often just chatting to Daisy and I remember one day she was talking about Ollie, her grandson's new hamster that had gotten for his birthday and I just started talking about the fact that I had gerbils when I was a kid

and it was only by the time I got to the other side of the bridge that I went, what am I doing? This is an AI? I mean, is it kind of in this situation where you're able to have a conversation with someone who just wants to know more? You know, they're not going to get mad at you, and they're not, it's just this kind of a friend you can talk to. Yeah, I think it's really interesting in the whole field of AI.

You know, there are a lot of like conversational companion-based, chat bots and things out there. And it kind of leans into the human ability to want to communicate with anyone, and if that happens to be someone who's artificial, that we're able to suspend our sense of disbelief. And that's what we found ourselves doing. We were the builders of this thing. We designed the personality. So you would have thought that we might have suffered some sort of impedance in being able to just naturally chat to Daisy, but it just wasn't the case. After many months of working on Daisy, Ben and Morton decided she was ready to start taking real phone calls. They'd worked with Scam Bader Jim Browning to figure out ways to

scatter Daisy's information across the internet and get it on to scam operators' lists of phone numbers. So when we connected first with scammers and we were all the sat there with our hearts in our mouth, just wondering after all this months of prototyping and work, would it actually feel like a conversation? Would the scammer get it? Would they be scammed? So we were actually in a little room in our agency where it was just Benmey and a couple of the call team and the first call came through. And they just started talking. I mean, it was a female scammer actually the first person that came through and she was trying to get Daisy to give up some information

but Daisy was talking about the birds in her garden and the scammer started to talk about the birds that she liked so all of a sudden they had this long conversation about birds and the scammer was talking about how she loved all God's creations and it was just an interesting call We literally had to not say anything because it was in an open room. Anything we would have said would have been picked up. So it was really hard just to sit and just listen to that without laughing.

Eventually, Morton and Ben ended the call. They felt like it had been a success. About a month later, they had a launch party and invited the woman whose voice they used for Daisy. And obviously, we asked her what it felt like. And she was just happy that her voice was actually helping. And she felt like, you know, that was a nice contribution. But she also just liked all the hoopla that we sort of created around her. And then Daisy started taking lots of calls.

In one phone call, which lasted over 40 minutes, several people got on the line to try and get Daisy to type W-W-W-W dot into her browser. So W's then a dot? Three times W and then dot. And you could actually hear the kind of relay that happened as multiple scammer court agents were kind of taving their go at Daisy. So one would come on and just get exasperated,

but they didn't want to give up on this opportunity. This could still be converted. So they'd bring in another colleague who'd have another go. And Daisy had just, she might be talking about this, that and the other playing bridge with her friends. And you can hear that frustration building. After a while, they do get very frustrated. They're not getting what they want. And they try to do that intimidation tactic to get people flustered

because they know that sometimes that might make them more likely to make a mistake. So they will say really nasty thing to her. Obviously, the air doesn't have any emotions, so it doesn't get upset. So it's just able to continue annoying them no matter what they say. It's nearly been an hour for the love of... Gosh, how time flies. As they listened in on Daisy, taking one phone call after another, Ben and Morton noticed that she started coming

up with things on her own, things that Ben and Morton hadn't added to her data set. It's showing me a picture of my cat Fluffy. It's showing you the picture of your cat Fluffy. Her cat Fluffy is something she made up herself. She knows her mission is to waste as much time as possible, so she has to fill it. So she constantly picks up on different parts of her own character design to fill that time. and waste it. You tell her name, you tell her age,

where she lives, her family and relationships, and her hobbies, and you outline all of this. And it's enough for the model to start predicting and almost assuming that role. But it also then assumes other things. It predicts other things that this character might say or do. And as Morton was saying, One day she didn't have a cat called Fluffy, and one day she did.

So we've said that she likes cooking and she likes baking. So if she wants to suddenly come up and talk about and give her entire recipe for scones, she'll just do that. Because again, she's looked at the framing of her personality, and she's predicting based on that what would be right to talk about. You can see an application named Play Store. Play Store. B-L-A-Y, Play Store. Dear, did you say Pastry? I'm afraid I'm not quite on the right page. No, no, Papa. I'm talking about the Play Store application. Play Store. It's not pastry.

Oh, dear, I'm so sorry. I'm a bit muddled. So Play Store. I'm trying to get there. My screen seems to... Open up the application. Open the application. Oh, dear. I think I clicked something wrong. Open up the application. It seems to have gone black. Is that supposed to happen? How do I get it back? I do can't see anything right now.

That's right, dear. Just blackness, like the night sky. I hope it comes back soon. What should I do? Like if you're wasting our time, then you're going to lose all of your money, ma'am, because somebody's trying to take out your money, and we're just trying to upgrade the security.

Oh, I've got the home screen back. Yeah, just open up the place to your application, ma'am. Try to find out the place. Play store. Play store. Oh dear, I see a triangle icon, but I'm not sure if it's the right one. It could be a slice of pie. You know, my eyesight isn't what it used to be.

Let me just squint at it. Just try to find out the written icon. Play Store. B-L-A-Y. Play Store. Oh, bless. It's still like loading. I hope it doesn't take too long, dear.

Do you have any lovely pastries in your area? Ah. I do adore a good scone. If you're interested, I could share my recipe for a lovely... Ah, me, ma'am, not interested in the recipes, okay? Oh, dear, you sound a bit frustrated. We'll be right back. Support for this show.

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Void in Ontario. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.c.com slash audio. Scammers are using artificial intelligence more and more. For example, to target people over text. In the U.S., complaints about text scams went up 500% between 2015 and 2015. And scammers are using AI to clone people's voices, often using short video clips they find on social media. They can be as short as three seconds.

Then they make phone calls to that person's family members who think they're actually talking to a relative who's asking for money. In 2020, an attorney received a phone call from what sounded like his son, saying he'd been in an accident, had been arrested, and needed help. He told him the name and number of the public defender he'd been assigned. The attorney said that it wasn't until he was driving to the bank to wire money for bail and had a few moments to think, that he became suspicious. One night, a couple in Brooklyn were asleep, when one of them, her name is Robin, received a phone call. When she looked at the phone, it said it was her mother-in-law. When Robin picked up, her mother-in-law seemed to be crying.

and kept saying, I can't do it. Robin's husband, Steve, got on the phone, and a strange man told him that he had a gun, and they needed to transfer money into a Venmo account if he wanted his parents to live. Steve asked to hear his mother's voice again, but the man refused. Steve transferred the money anyway.

The man hung up, and Steve called his parents. After a while, they picked up. His mother was confused. She told Steve that they were in bed. They had no idea what he was talking about. Some scammers can even clone video. In 2004, a finance worker in Hong Kong sent $25 million to someone who he thought was a senior staff member at his company

after he believed they'd had a video conference. Security experts say that if you want to check if a video call is real, ask the person to stand up or wave a hand. If the video glitches, it's probably a fake. Do you like AI? I mean, aren't you nervous about it? Doesn't this make you nervous? I mean, we knew in 2022 that this technology was going to have an impact

on our business, on our clients, and us as human beings, and the way that we work and the way that we interpret. And we wanted to try and learn it and to see its potential. Eventually, I gave up on scamming Daisy and hung up. Great, excellent. Yeah, she hung up as well. It was good. I think she did really well.

No, that was great. We decided to call Daisy again. And Ben and Morton put her in a different mode, one where they said she knew who I was, so I could just talk to her as myself. Oh, hello. Daisy's speaking. Who may I ask is this? Hi, Daisy. This is Phoebe. Oh, bless. Phoebe, it's such a delight to speak with you.

You know who I am? Oh, absolutely, dear. Your Phoebe Judge, the wonderful host of the podcast, Criminal. I admire your storytelling and how you bring such depth to your episodes. It's a real treat to chat with you. So that's a great compliment. Oh, thank you, dear. It's just the truth.

Your voice and storytelling really resonate with me. It's like a warm cupper on a chilly day. I do appreciate the lovely work you do. I'm glad that you enjoy the show. I particularly enjoyed the episode, Ava and the Pickpocket. It really made me think about trust and deception, much like my own little escapades with those pesky phone scammers. I just want to thank you very much for talking.

Oh, it's my pleasure, dear. I always enjoy a good chat. Next week, we hear from someone who found herself on the other side of a scam. She thought she was accepting a regular customer service job in Thailand. But then she realized something wasn't right. I'm just thinking that if I escape, what will happen to me, and then if I go through what will happen to me too. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me.

Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Canane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julie and Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at this iscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at this iscriminal.com slash newsletter.

We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This Is Love, and Phoebe reads a mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal. Co-creator, Lauren Spore, talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to this iscriminal.com slash plus. We're on Facebook at This Is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at YouTube.com slash criminal podcast.

Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at Podcast. voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal.