A couple in Michigan got one phone call from a voice they trusted — and $66,000 of their closing money was gone. Was it an AI voice clone? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. There was no step in the process where it would have mattered.
The same summer, four of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street got calls from people who weren’t who they said they were. Nobody lost a dollar. The difference wasn’t a deepfake detector. It was a rule.
In this episode: what actually happened, what the headlines got wrong, why you can’t train people to spot a deepfake, the payment rule that quietly became mandatory in June — and three things you can do this week for $0.
⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open — four hedge funds, one couple
00:55 THE BLAST — Michigan, $66,000, and a phone call
02:00 Was it a deepfake? (it doesn’t matter)
03:34 A busy summer — Wall Street, Spain, Hong Kong, North Korea
06:42 What the headlines got wrong
09:20 RADIUS CHECK — you can’t train it out of people
11:20 Every catch was a human with a rule
12:22 The rule that landed in June (Nacha)
16:55 THE FIX — three things
20:53 Where to go deeper
📚 FREE cybersecurity foundations course
Inside The Blast Radius → https://www.skool.com/blastradius
The Fix in this episode maps to Module 3 (Identity), free. The social-engineering module is the community’s next vote.
🎬 Watch the video edition: https://youtu.be/0Ps5llxqjlE
🔗 SOURCES
CNN — the Michigan homebuyers (Sep 15 2026) — https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/15/us/homebuyers-voice-cloning-scam
FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report — https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf
FBI PSA: create a secret word with your family (Dec 3 2024) — https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2024/PSA241203
Wall Street vishing wave (Aug 2026) — https://www.investmentnews.com/fintech/point72-citadel-among-hedge-funds-hit-by-ai-vishing-attacks/267708
Spain: face-swap vs video ID (Aug 2026) — https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/11/deepfake-hiccup-unmasks-suspected-digital-certificate-fraudster/5285934
Hong Kong: AI voice notes after a WhatsApp hijack — https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3362297/hong-kong-raises-alert-ai-voices-150-whatsapp-hijackings-lead-hk26m-losses
North Korean IT workers — US State Dept alert (Jul 2026) — https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/07/alert-to-countries-companies-and-other-entities-regarding-north-korean-it-workers
Arup, Hong Kong (2024) — https://hongkongfp.com/2024/02/05/multinational-loses-hk200-million-to-deepfake-video-conference-scam-hong-kong-police-say/
Humans vs deepfakes meta-analysis (2024) — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958824001714
Nacha Fraud Monitoring Phase 2 — https://www.nacha.org/rules/risk-management-topics-fraud-monitoring-phase-2
CISA ScubaGear (Microsoft 365) — https://github.com/cisagov/ScubaGear
CISA ScubaGoggles (Google Workspace) — https://github.com/cisagov/ScubaGoggles
THE BLAST RADIUS — Cyber • Tech • What’s Next
Hosted by Quinn “Q” Vidal
Theme: “Blast Radius” by Quinn Vidal
🌐 https://theblastradius.io
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#cybersecurity #deepfakes #scams #smallbusiness #wirefraud
