The Los Angeles woman reportedly was deceived from over $81,000 by a con man using videos generated by “General Hospital” star Steve Burton’s AI.
According to Abc7 News, Abigail Ruvalcaba sent money through prepaid cards, cash and Bitcoin after the actor was detained earlier this year for believing in real estate lost in a Los Angeles wildfire.
Abigail planned to sell her LA condo for $350,000 and fund the scammers until her daughter Vivian Ruvalcaba intervened.
“If I didn’t intervene when I did, she would have sent $70,000 to the scammer from that money that was sitting there,” Vivian shared.
Abigail believed she was in a relationship with Burton after she began receiving AI clips of the actor’s similarity of whom she has publicly declared his love for her.
In one of the messages the outlet shares, Burton’s deepfake version tells Abigail:
Vivienne told the outlet that her mother suffered from bipolar 1 disorder and was on an episode of Man’s disease when she began receiving messages from con artists last October.
“Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings. These are also known as manicians or mild manias. In certain cases, manicians “can cause a break from reality.”
“There were no con artists on her head. She was talking to Steve Burton the whole time,” Vivian said.
According to her daughter, Abigail is in “full debt” due to the calculated scheme and “will need to file for bankruptcy.”
“She’s embarrassed and has that stress, to me, myself, my dad, my whole family, I know it’s going to be heavy on her,” Vivian continued.
Vivian shed tears as she emotionally told the outlet that she was “sick” in the ordeal.
“Why did it get this far, why am I tired of it? Why didn’t I know this? Why did I not know what was going on? What do I miss?” she said.
Burton, who starred as Jason Morgan in General Hospital since 1991, also spoke to the outlet and confirmed that he had unfortunately seen him using this type of scam and using his portrait multiple times.
“It’s hundreds of knowing who lost the money. It’s in hundreds,” Burton said. “People come to my appearance and look at me like they’ve been building relationships online for several years, ‘No, sorry, I don’t know who you are’ It’s so sad, you’ll see devastation. ”
He also warned his fans to be vigilant against similar scams, saying, “I don’t need your money. I’ll never ask for money.”
A similar romantic scam was reported in January after a French woman coughed $850,000 to someone on social media pretending to be Brad Pitt.
An interior designer named Anne gave the fake Pitt a savings of her life after being fooled by AI images, believing that Pitt was sick in the hospital and needed to help pay his bill.
She finds herself fooled by a con man after seeing reports of Pitt’s ongoing relationship with Innez de Ramon.
