Scammers Sent AI Fake Photos of a Missing Man to His Parents and Demanded $6,000
Criminals used a social media plea about a missing autistic man to generate a fake image of him and threaten his family. It is a preview of where AI-powered extortion is heading.
Key points
- Criminals sent Rakoia Battensoli's parents an AI-generated image of their missing son within hours of a public Facebook appeal posted in early July 2025.
- The message demanded $6,000 within 24 hours and threatened to kill him and "sell his body parts".
- Battensoli, 23, was later found safe in Perth, about 168 kilometres from his home in Bunbury, Western Australia.
- Australia's Scamwatch received 61,400 scam reports this year, with losses topping $94.5 million.
- Western Australia Police warned that AI-generated content can appear highly realistic and should not be accepted as genuine.
Rakoia Battensoli had been missing for about two weeks when his mother, Montina Delamere, posted a public appeal on social media asking people to look out for him. He has autism, and his family was frightened. Within hours of that post going live, the criminals moved.
Both of Battensoli's parents received a message containing an AI-generated fake photo of their son, along with a threat: "You gonna wire us $6,000 within 24 hrs or we cut off his neck and sell his body parts."
Battensoli was found safe and well in Perth. The threat was fiction. But the fear his family felt was real.
"I was worried for my baby," Ms Delamere told ABC News Australia. "But there's people out there that would be in turmoil and they would probably send people like that the money."
She is right about that.
How did the criminals pull this off so quickly?
They scraped the family's public post, fed the photos and details into an AI image tool, and had a personalised threat ready in minutes. No technical skill required, no large criminal budget either.
University of New South Wales cognitive psychologist James Dunn says this is exactly the shift AI has enabled. "It lowers the cost for these scammers to make these scams feel personal," he told ABC News Australia. Where the old "Nigerian Prince" email was generic and sent to millions, today's version uses a convincing fake photo of someone you love. Dunn described it as "a very lucrative market for anyone who thinks this is a great way to make a buck."
The failure mode is obvious: a single public post containing a name and photos is all the raw material a criminal needs. Threat Vectr covered the same weaponisation of AI fakes in a New York political disinformation case on 9 July, and the tools are only getting cheaper.
Retired Bunbury detective and e-safety expert Kristi McVee called it a "massive issue." Delamere, she noted, was already a victim of a frightening situation. Scammers made her a secondary victim before her son was even found.
Should you worry?
If you or someone you know posts a public appeal about a missing person, keep identifying photos off public-facing posts where possible and route tips through police rather than a personal phone number. A threatening message demanding money warrants a call to police before anything else. Do not send money.
Western Australia Police put it plainly: AI-generated content can look highly realistic and should not be accepted as proof of anything. A public post asking for help is also a data feed for anyone willing to misuse it.
