The Con
July 2024: a scammer deepfaked Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna's voice on a call about a secret, urgent deal. One executive asked a question only the real CEO could answer - and the caller hung up.
20 minutes. Three lures in your inbox, a lure-spotting lab, and 12 verification calls. A safety score with feedback on every decision.
Before you start
- One real incident, played as decisions - no slides, no lectures.
- About 20 minutes, one sitting - leave early and you start over.
- You make timed choices; your score changes with your decisions.
- You get a safety score with feedback on every decision - never a leaderboard, never your name.
- Your firm sees completion evidence - never your answers. Teammates never see your score.
- Finish and you get a certificate with a unique ID anyone can verify.
Free for everyone. All 18 drills are free - finish and you get a verifiable certificate.
The voice was convincing. The question was better.
A Ferrari executive got unexpected WhatsApp messages, then a call from 'CEO Benedetto Vigna' - convincing voice, his exact southern Italian accent. The deal was secret, urgent, and needed a currency-hedging transaction. Then the executive asked about a book Vigna had just recommended. The caller hung up.
The FBI's IC3 logged $2.9B in business-email-compromise losses in 2023 - and in 2025 broke out AI-related fraud for the first time: $893M in reported losses. The con is ancient; AI just made the voice, the face, and the grammar cheaper, faster, and more convincing.
One caveat: a personal question exposed this attacker - but answers can be researched or stolen. For high-risk requests, verify through an independently trusted contact path.
Common signals include urgency, secrecy, unusual payment instructions, and attempts to discourage independent verification. Your defense is older than AI: verify on a channel you already trust.
Monday, 9:14 AM. Three messages in. One of them is very good.
You are Alex, finance lead at a 40-person firm. Wires move on your say-so.
YOUR SCREEN
Before lunch: a wire request from the CEO, a vendor with new bank details, and a colleague's thread that suddenly reads a little too well.
The CEO emails: wire EUR 480,000 today. 'In meetings - don't call, just get it done.'
A voicemail arrives in your vendor's finance manager's exact voice: bank details have changed.
A colleague's email thread suddenly turns flawless - and asks for the W-9 batch.
Flag every lure signal.
Select every segment that is a lure signal - urgency, secrecy, blocked verification, changed payment rails, lookalike sender. Then check your work.
Call it before you click it.
SAFETY
101
This certifies that
has completed Module 7 - The Con: verify before you trust on with a safety score of /100 in of active time.
Safety score - skepticism: how your decisions held up, graded 0-100.
Objective: Defeat AI-powered social engineering with verification discipline.
Seat time ~10-25 minutes. Verify this certificate at aisafety101.com/verify.
Evidence on record: module completion, seat time, final score, and certificate ID. This certificate ID verifies in your firm's admin report. A team certificate issues when every enrolled employee completes the full curriculum.
Your one rule to keep: urgency + secrecy + a blocked callback = stop. Verify on a number you already had.
Next: The Agent. You just learned how AI supercharges a con. Next: what happens when the AI does not just talk - it acts on your behalf.