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NOPE
Low reported severity

Game and coffee store in Havre reports phone scam in which an employee heard what sounded like the owner's voice

In a 4 February 2025 report by Hi-Line Today, the owner of a game and coffee store in a Havre shopping mall said an employee received a call on a personal phone that appeared to come from the employee's own number and carried what the employee described as the owner's voice. The owner said the scammers had also duplicated the owner's number. The article says the store reported that the scam compromised bank details and caused monetary losses; the owner said the employee was not blamed. The reporter describes the scam as using AI voice replication. The only support for a cloned voice is the employee's claim, relayed by the owner.

AI system
Unidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)
Occurred
Event date unknown
Reported
4 February 2025
Event location
Unknown
What the AI did
Depicted or impersonated the person · Communicated with the person
Reported harm
Financial Loss
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Finance · Work
Evidence
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source
3 claims: 3 reported. 6 open questions
People reported harmed
Not reliably quantifiable from the sources

AI system as recorded: Unspecified AI voice replication tool (reported by the outlet, not identified)

Reported harm

A local outlet reports that the store said the phone scam compromised bank details and caused monetary losses to the store (amounts not stated).

What remains unknown

  • Date of the calls (the report says 'recently').
  • Amount lost and whether any was recovered.
  • Whether the voice was actually AI-generated.
  • Whether police, the bank or a voice analysis was involved.
  • Only one outlet was found; a search for a second Havre source found none.
  • Country and state are not stated in the article text (Havre is named).

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: suspected. The reporter states the scam used AI voice replication. The owner's quotes do not mention AI or cloning; the only supporting detail is the employee's claim, relayed by the owner, that the caller's voice sounded like the owner. No recording, analysis, police or bank statement is cited.

3 claims: 3 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The store reported that an over-the-phone scam compromised bank details and caused the store monetary losses.

Causal attribution. The store's account as relayed by the outlet; no amounts, bank or police confirmation are given.

  • hilinetoday.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    were recently the victim of an over the phone scam which compromised bank details and monetary losses from the store
Reported An employee received a call on a personal phone that appeared to come from the employee's own number and heard a voice the employee said sounded just like the owner. The owner said the scammers had duplicated both personal numbers.

Causal attribution. The owner relays the employee's account. The owner did not hear the call.

Reported The reporting outlet describes the scam as using AI voice replication.

Causal attribution. Outlet statement. The article gives no evidence that the voice was synthetic rather than a human imitation.

Sources

1 source inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The article text names Havre and a mall but gives no state or country. Publisher navigation is not used to assign a country.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: Concrete event reported to a local outlet by the store owner, with a reported financial loss to the store. The event start is not established: the sole source says 'recently' in a 4 February 2025 article. AI involvement is the reporter's statement and rests on the employee's impression, so it is recorded as suspected.

People reported harmed in this case

Not reliably quantifiable from the sources

The article does not state that the owner personally lost money. The reported loss is the store's. No harm to the deceived employee is reported. No person harm is counted, and the store is not counted as a person.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). Game and coffee store in Havre reports phone scam in which an employee heard what sounded like the owner's voice. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-havre-game-coffee-store-phone-scam-reported-ai-voice-replication

BibTeX

@misc{2025_havre_game_coffee_store_phone_scam_reported_ai_voice_replication,
  title = {Game and coffee store in Havre reports phone scam in which an employee heard what sounded like the owner's voice},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-havre-game-coffee-store-phone-scam-reported-ai-voice-replication}
}

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