CNBC exec almost lost his crypto in minutes and was saved by an AI chatbot. Here’s how to spot impersonation scams
Nobody is too smart to get scammed. Just ask Jason Gewirtz, the vice president of news at CNBC.
As he revealed in a column for CNBC, Gewirtz recently came close to handing access to his entire cryptocurrency portfolio over to someone posing as a Coinbase security representative (1). Business journalists are often trained to be skeptical and alert to financial fraud, yet this scam was so convincing that Gewirtz nearly fell for it.
What saved him was having to suspend the call to attend a work meeting. With the convincing voice no longer pressuring him to act, Gewirtz was able to take a beat and recognize a few red flags from the call. He even used artificial intelligence, as well as a…
