AI Deepfakes of Athletes Are Being Used to Drain Sports Fans' Wallets

According to KCRG-TV, scammers are using artificial intelligence to build fake images and videos of athletes and celebrities, then placing them on social media pages built to look like genuine fan communities. The fake content is designed to pull on emotion first, and the money request comes after.

Ray Waldheim runs the verified "Atlanta Braves Chop Live" fan page. He says he constantly sees fake photos of real players surfacing on other pages, often AI-generated and built around a story that tugs at heartstrings. KCRG reports the schemes have cost victims thousands of dollars.

How the approach works

The scam depends on a fan trusting what looks like an athlete's own page or a fellow fan's post. A real player's face and voice are convincing because they are generated from real footage. The image or video is not pitched as a product or an ad. It is pitched as a personal moment: a struggling athlete, a sick child, a story that asks for sympathy rather than a sale.

That emotional framing is the step the scam cannot work without. A fan who sees a request for money and pauses to ask why a professional athlete would need it from a stranger online breaks the chain. A fan who responds to the feeling in the video, before asking that question, does not.

What separates the real page from the fake one

Waldheim's own page carries a verification mark and a track record fans can check against. The imitators do not. They borrow the athlete's likeness without the history, the verification, or any way to confirm the page is run by the team or the player.

The mechanism does not depend on a fan being careless about money generally. It depends on a fan being a fan: wanting the story to be true, wanting to help, recognizing the face before registering that the page behind it is new or unverified. KCRG's reporting does not name a specific platform or give a count of victims beyond saying the losses reach into the thousands of dollars per case.

The tell is less about the image quality and more about the ask. A real athlete's official channels do not solicit direct payments from fans through a sympathetic personal story. Any page that does, verified-looking or not, is asking a fan to skip the question a stranger's request for money should always raise.