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Florida man says his wife ‘wants a divorce’ after he lost $45,000 on an AI-generated Elon Musk car scam
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
424 points (98.8% liked)
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She's right: she lives with a dumbass.
I've never understood this "old people are vulnerable" thing (not to mention that 69 ain't that old): even if the scam is really good, at some point the mark is asked to make a large amount of money flow out of their bank account: anybody with the good sense the good lord gave to donkeys would have alarm bells ringing loudly between their ears. Everybody I've met in my life reacts like that.
I might understand if the scanner impersonates a close family member really well - although if one of my children started asking me large sums of money, I would get suspicious because... well, they just don't. But Elon Musk? That guy ain't a victim, he's a moron.
You might be surprised about this, but as people age, so do their brains. They do not function as well and sometimes develop serious issues. Stop assuming everyone has the same resources to work with. Protect the vulnerable from bad actors.
As of the time of this reply, 3 people have downvoted you. I cannot fathom reading your message and thinking "Well this guy is clearly wrong! Everybody should be judged equally!"
How they came to the conclusion to downvote you, I'll never know.
It's quick, it's easy and it's free, just like pouring river water into your socks!
Why would I pour river water into my socks?
Because it's quick, it's easy, and it's free!
It's not that quick, the nearest river is about a 25 minute walk from me, I wouldn't call that convenient. Also it's raining , so I can't go now or I'll get wet.
Lol
You could possibly DoorDash some river water to your home. (I don’t know how DoorDash works.)
But then it won’t be free. Hm. Foiled by capitalism!
Millions of Facebook users fought off COVID with apple cider vinegar and onion slices in their sleeping socks.
also HORSE/CATTLE PASTE TOO.
I only downvoted them because I got the idea from your comment.
I haven't down voted them but I was strongly inclined to do so.
It's an argumentative comment that adds nothing to the conversation. Of course we should protect vulnerable people, but we actually already do do that. At some point someone has to take responsibility for their own susceptibility to manipulation, such as recognise you can no longer make sound financial decisions and give power of attorney to someone else. Otherwise it is their fault they're getting manipulated.
Just because of victim is over the age of 40 doesn't mean that they're mentally infeebled. This attitude ignores the underlying issue which is that quite a lot of people are just quite stupid.
We do protect the vulnerable from bad actors, when anybody tries to make large transfers of money the banks are required to check the validity of the transaction but ultimately if the individual insists what's the bank supposed to do. It's their money.
There is only so much that it is possible to do, and beyond a certain point you have to accept that scams are either going to happen or just take people's ability to control of their own money away from them, neither are particularly good options.
You make a great point - not all of us have the same capacities and there need to be protections in place to prevent people falling for scams - but I just don’t know where the line is between personal responsibility and collective responsibility. Like, for society to function, we all need to assume some amount of collective responsibility to protect others but that can’t be at 100%. People need to take some amount of personal responsibility for their actions, otherwise we slide towards a society with no learning and no repercussions which is a recipe for disaster and collapse.
It’s a tenuous relationship, and extremely context-dependent, so I don’t think that there is an objective and quantitative answer to the question. Would make an interesting philosophical/ethical debate though.
And yet we let them vote and run the country.
We can't even agree to revalidate their driving ability because that would be disrespectful.
They don't get to have it both ways.
Stupid young people are allowed to vote too. And for good reason. Tying ability to vote to a check of capability is easily, and historically broadly, abused
Stupid people of all ages are allowed to vote. We're specifically talking about diminished mental capacity.
That's exactly what he's saying. How do you test for "diminished capacity" we've had arbitrary tests like that in the USA before. It didn't go well for certain "types" of people. It's a very slippery slope. That's why it's a right for for all citizens, even if they are dumber than a potato. Creating an arbitrary age limitation introduces a new landmine no politician in their right mind wants to step on.
And is stupidity not within that category?
No, stupidity is the absence of something that was never there.
Even a stupid person can experience cognitive decline.
Avoiding scams is as easy as walking a single step. Yet almost everyone has tripped at least once in their life
We're exposed to scams all the time, all it takes is falling for one of them. Have a little empathy, because it absolutely could be you one day
It happens to soook many people. Thousands-10s of thousands of people a day. And not all of them are complete idiots, they are just stressed out/worried about some shit in a rush and make a mistake. You get a convincing enough email/text/call whatever and they call the number listed because they are worried someone got into their account.
Shit, I think I saw an article a couple days ago saying roughly $16 billion dollars were scammed from people in the U.S. like that in 2024 alone.
Very often the person who got scammed realizes right away but soon as that person that remoted in presses whatever button it's done. If they aren't paying attention, that $5,000 in Apple gift cards was bought with your face ID to verify it, the activation code was grabbed from the email they delete the email and end the call. They immediately redeem the activation code on a random Apple ID they have, and it's a race to use those funds up before the person scammed realizes, gets a hold of Apple, and apple flags the purchase and freezes the account it was activated on.
Even if all the funds are still on the Apple account and frozen... The person who got scammed won't get that money back I don't believe. Apple profits from that purchase, why would they want to lose that sale. People buy Uber and other such gift cards as well. And not much is done to stop all these people getting scammed
I wasn't with you at first, people age at different rates and cognitive decline comes for us all, but the point you make about Elon Musk is convincing enough.
I won't pity him but I also hope they catch the theif.
Old people spent almost all their lives living in a different world, where you could trust and believe in certain things. That world has dissolved just as their brains got too old to adapt to the change. It's hard for everyone to keep up, but for some people it's impossible. My father in law is like that, his smartphone is always full of crap because if he sees a popup advert telling him he needs to install something, he'll do as he's told. He can't tell the difference between an advert and a system message. He grew up in a world where most of the time you could basically trust what people were telling you, especially if it looked official. Modern technology and media has no consideration for such vulnerable people, except for finding ways to exploit them.
Once you get into non-standard investments (so not stocks/etfs/CDs/etc.) things get a lot murkier a lot quicker. At some point you are just trusting some person with a lot of money. I mean look at Bernie Maddoff, he was just some guy promising a return on investments.
It's simple: Boomers grew up in a world where money was handed out for free just for being white. The ideas of hard work, financial responsibility, or the value of a dollar were lost on the whole generation. They don't think twice about sending $25,000 to some random person because that's how they got that money in the first place (50 years ago, which they used to buy their first house (now their fourth rental property)).
Hope this helps
No they weren't
Oh okay my bad I got confused
NP
uh..actually, part of the scam was a $10,000 investment on a promised return of $120,000.