Artificial patriots: Foreign scammers use AI military photos to steal from U.S. widows

ATLANTA (InvestigateTV) — The double-amputee soldier holds a cake and asks for birthday wishes. Patriotic Americans like, comment, and share the post with their followers.

But the soldier isn't real. He was created by artificial intelligence.

InvestigateTV found thousands of AI-generated photographs of wounded soldiers, aging veterans, and U.S. troops overseas holding signs saying they miss their families, or, "I'm finally going home." Many more show uniformed military couples holding their babies.

They're all fake.

Closer inspection shows some of the soldiers have six fingers on each hand. Sometimes there are extra hands in the photo. The name tapes on their uniforms are often garbled with the U.S. Army spelled 'Amry.' The American flag often has too many stars, or too few.

Babies in the photos often wear military medals and even body armor. One soldier sits in a car that inexplicably has only one seat. Dozens of aging veterans sit on a plane that impossibly has no aisles.

Patriotic pages run from other countries The Facebook pages have names like Proudly American. Its cover photo shows troops marching behind U.S. flags. But the listed contact address in Dallas, Texas, doesn't exist.

But digging three levels down into the Facebook's page transparency feature uncovered the Proudly American page is managed by three users in Morocco.

Proudly American, one of dozens of patriotic Facebook pages InvestigateTV, found across social media that share identical AI-generated photos of American soldiers, veterans, and military babies. Those with page management information show they're not run out of the United States.

Other AI-generated photos include semis driving down the interstate covered with American flags. Zooming into the photos reveals the highway signs filled with gibberish, and the semis are sometimes driving down the wrong side of the road.

The pages sharing similar images often include the phrase, "Why don't photos like this ever trend?" The question is always followed by a series of periods and line breaks that keep the tagging of several celebrities hidden from view.

That format is replicated on several pages, many with tens of thousands of followers each.

Fake U.S. generals lurk in the comments Patriotic images on patriotic pages often lure patriotic comments, even though the pages are managed by people overseas.

When an older woman posts a comment on the AI-generated image like, "Support our troops," flattering replies often follow from someone claiming to be a U.S. military general. The general then asks the commenter to send them a "friend" request so they can share private messages.

The names and photos of the generals are real, but the commenters are imposters, according to the U.S. Army, which said it reports hundreds of fake accounts each month.

"The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) is aware of online accounts impersonating or misrepresenting Army personnel, to include senior leaders, for various nefarious purposes," said CID Special Agent Mark Lunardi.

Many of the social media pages claiming to belong to military generals include the phrase "U.S. Government Official," and display biographical information that matches that of the real general.

A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp initially told InvestigateTV the company plays a game of whack-a-mole, with new fake generals popping up faster than the company can take them down.

The company described the AI-generated image pages as "engagement bait." As InvestigateTV researched this story, Facebook's algorithm served up more and more AI images from the foreign-run patriot pages.

Meta asked for a list of the fake generals we found, but there were so many that InvestigateTV suggested the company start with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Meta has not yet responded to our requests for an interview.

When checking for pages purporting to be generals of the Joint Chiefs, InvestigateTV scrolled for more than five minutes and never reached the end of profiles claiming to be the current U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General Randy A. George.

Real general says his clones are scamming women "I don't have a social media presence," said retired U.S. Air Force four-star general Douglas Fraser. "I didn't have a Facebook page, and yet my wife noticed that I had several Facebook pages."

InvestigateTV met the real General Fraser in person. How many clone accounts are there? "My wife has recently checked, and she says right now there are 300 plus," Fraser said.

The retired general and F-15 fighter pilot said scammers started using his name and photograph 14 years ago when he was still on active duty as commanding officer of the U.S. Southern Command.

"A lot of mine started as romance scams," Fraser said.

On many of the fake "General Fraser" pages on Facebook, he's listed as a widower. That was a big surprise to Fraser's longtime wife. Rena Fraser showed us a text message from a woman with the last name of Fraser claiming to be his real wife.

"You don't know me. Tell your husband text me back. I'm his wife," the text message read.

Rena Fraser said she is regularly contacted by women from all over the globe, claiming to be dating her husband, and accusing her of being the imposter.

"The fact that people want to believe that we're not telling the truth and that my wife, who is on social media, is not telling the truth is really sad to see," Gen. Fraser said. "And it doesn't appear that there's anything we or she can do to change people's minds. The fact that a scammer can have that ability to manipulate people is really a scary fact."

InvesigateTV found accounts using the general's photographs but with multiple different names, all over the world.

Gen. Fraser described receiving a call from a woman in Italy who said her mother had fallen for a romance scam using Fraser's name and photograph.

"And she called my wife back and said her mom had killed herself because she'd given her whole life savings, 200,000 euros, to these scammers," he said.

The general agreed with the characterization that this is cyber warfare.

Fraser said Meta suggested he set up his own Facebook account so he could point to the real General Douglas Fraser. He said his account was shut down by Facebook within six months for being "inauthentic" while hundreds of fake "General Fraser" pages persist on the social media platform.

Meanwhile, InvesigateTV found a clone page claiming he was the real General Douglas Fraser, and that he finally got his account back from the scammers.

"It's fake," Fraser said. "I'm not on Facebook." He added, "Almost zero general officers and flag officers who would ever ask anyone for money."

The general said it was "heartbreaking" that so many people are getting scammed using his name and image, including the Americans he swore an oath to protect. "My frustration is there doesn't appear to be anything that I can do to stop it."

The romance scam "One day, this guy's telling me he loves me, and I'm saying I love him back, and the next day, bam! He takes off with my money," said Jeanne Wasserman.

The retiree fell for a U.S. naval officer stationed in Syria, or so she thought. He had reached out to her on Instagram.

"That was my downfall right from the beginning, was believing the first person that talked to me, that he loved me, that he was going to make a wonderful life for us," Wasserman said.

Wasserman is a member of Scam Haters United, one of the many public and private Facebook pages where survivors of military romance scams share their stories and warn others.

Marian Molnar, another survivor and a moderator on the Scam Haters United page, called these scams, "emotional and financial rape."

In Wasserman's case, it started with a few gift cards the fake naval officer said he needed because he was unable to access his bank account while deployed.

Then came the $60,000 helicopter ride he needed to get out of Syria. Wasserman said she went to the bank, withdrew the money from her life savings, and sent it to her online boyfriend who asked for the funds in bitcoin.

Only when she saw the same pictures of the Navy doctor on other pages with different names did Wasserman begin to realize he wasn't who he claimed to be. Ultimately, her son-in-law convinced her to stop sending money.

By then, it was too late. Wasserman had sent the impersonator more than $130,000 over the year of their online romance.

"I just broke down crying, Wasserman said. "I really let my family down."

Wasserman filed a report with the local police. "They sent it off to the FBI, but I never heard anything," she said.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, nearly 70,000 romance scams were reported in 2022 with total losses of $1.3 billion.

The scammer playbook InvestigateTV talked with several survivors of military romance scams, some of them while they were still sending money to people they had never met. Many of them were widows who displayed that status on their social media profiles.

Each of them described strikingly similar romances, with the military-officer imposters filling a void in their lives with loving messages, poetry, love songs, and photos of them on deployment.

Experts said the scammers are mainly in Ghana and Nigeria, where they call themselves Yahoo Boys. Those experts said there are schools where teens and young adults are taught how to portray U.S. military officers. They're provided with caches of the generals' photographs downloaded from .gov websites and genuine social media posts.

Then there's the playbook.

InvestigateTV has obtained three lengthy files that appear to show the scripts that scammers can copy and paste in response to any text message from their targets.

One is titled "Caring Love Poems," and goes on for 64 pages. "All of my heart is forever yours," one reads. "Please take care of yourself for me till get back to the States soon. I miss you so much."

Another 23-page file, labeled the "Nigerian Scammers Playbook," has responses for military impersonators to give when their target asks for a voice call instead of a text: "Sorry I can't call you because...insurgents manipulate [cell phones] to detonate bombs, so for security reasons we don't use phones. Am sorry we can't talk on phone until am out of here."

The third 48-page file, labeled Formats, describes how to make convincing fake video calls. It also has prompts and answers to carry on a back-and-forth conversation in a perfect American dialect complete with typical typos. It includes detailed backstories about a childhood growing up in the United States.

Some of the suggested social media comments closely match those we found posted by the fake generals on the pages sharing AI-generated military photos.

InvestigateTV sent direct messages to the managers of several pages hosting the AI-generated images. We received no response.

We also called several U.S.-based phone numbers that scam victims told us were used by the fake military officers.

No one answered.

Advocating Against Romance Scammers: advocatingforu.com

FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center:

FBI Romance Scams Information Page:

Army Criminal Investigation Division Tip Reporting Page:

Facebook's scam reporting Page: