ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — Atlanta Braves fans have become the latest targets of sophisticated scammers using artificial intelligence to create convincing fake images and videos of celebrities and athletes.
The scammers are using AI technology to generate realistic content featuring Braves players in fabricated scenarios, often designed to manipulate emotions and extract money from unsuspecting fans.
According to the FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report, the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 859,532 complaints in 2024 with related losses topping $16.6 billion, representing a 33% increase from 2023. In Georgia alone, reported potential losses reached $420 million, a 40% increase year over year.
Ray Waldheim, who runs the verified fan page Atlanta Braves Chop Live with more than 242,000 followers, said he constantly sees fake photos of real players on other pages with names like “Braves Dugout” and “Tomahawk Territory.”
“A lot of AI-generated fake Braves fan pages are garnering a lot of followers and a lot of likes,” Waldheim said.
The fake pages often feature AI-generated images designed to tug at heartstrings, such as Braves players in uniform helping flood victims or performing charitable acts that never happened.
“One of the sad parts about it is that they’re playing on people’s emotions,” Waldheim said.
Emotional manipulation drives success
David Schweidel, an AI expert at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, said emotional manipulation is key to the scammers’ success.
“If I can get you thinking emotionally, you’re not thinking rationally,” Schweidel said. “We’re living in a scary time because publicly available AI’s and specifically the publicly available generative AI tools have gotten really good, very quickly.”
Sean O’Malley, co-founder of Atlanta Braves Chop Live, said fake pages are posting identical stories with different players. He has seen the same fabricated story about “Austin Riley giving away his old pickup truck to his old janitor” appear on football pages with different athletes and the same truck.
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The scammers often impersonate players in comments sections, then move conversations to private messages where they build fake relationships before requesting money.
Waldheim said one woman contacted his page after losing $2,000 to someone impersonating Braves third baseman Austin Riley.
“They reach out to us and they’re like, ‘What happened to this money that I donated to Austin Riley? Because Austin Riley contacted me and said that he had some financial issues and needed me to send him $2,000,’” Waldheim said. “And I’m thinking, Austin Riley, hundred-something million dollar contract, [is] obviously not having any financial issues.”
The technology has advanced to the point where scammers can create convincing deepfakes of anyone with minimal source material.
“Baseball players, actors, any type of public figure,” Schweidel said. “The video and audio of you doing your job is all that’s necessary to create these digital twins that are going to be used to rip people off,”
Schweidel said legitimate social media posts provide all the material scammers need. “That voice clip that you would need to create a voice clone is probably on the platform already,” he said.
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O’Malley said the fake pages often trace back to foreign operators. “One of the pages mentions the admins from Vietnam,” he said.
The problem extends far beyond the Braves. “Every major sports team is going to have this problem,” Waldheim said.
“These people who are scammers are very smart. That’s all they do for a living, and they’re doing it on multiple locations,” O’Malley said.
How to protect yourself
Experts recommend several steps to avoid becoming a victim:
Check when a page was created and where it’s based.Look for verification badges on official accounts.Be skeptical of direct messages from celebrities.Avoid clicking links in suspicious posts.Use common sense about celebrity interactions.
“Spend the few clicks that you need to say, this page that I’m looking at, when was it created? Where is it based out of? What size following does it have?,” Schweidel said. “Do your due diligence.”
Waldheim advised fans to be realistic about celebrity interactions. “Of course, we all would love to have [Ronald] Acuña directly reach out to us and say, ‘Hey, let’s be friends on social media,’” Waldheim said. “As Braves fans, that would be great. But in reality, that’s not going to happen.”
The celebrities themselves are victims too, Schweidel noted.
“You’ve got to get over that positive halo that you might have toward the person that’s been featured because the person being featured isn’t partnering with the people posting this,” he said. “They’re victims just like everyone else in this; their likeness is being ripped off in order to try to perpetrate these scams.”
If there’s something you would like Atlanta News First Chief Investigator Brendan Keefe to look into, email him directly at brendan.keefe@wanf.com.
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