An email that looked like a dream come true for any author landed in Jennifer M. Black's inbox: a personalized invitation to appear on Fresh Air to discuss her recent book. But the professor of history at Misericordia University grew suspicious enough to call the show's home station directly, and what she uncovered was part of a sprawling, AI-powered scam impersonating one of public radio's most trusted voices.
According to WHYY News, the station received complaints about similar personalized emails after Black called to verify her invitation. WHYY security launched an investigation once Black reported the suspected fraud, and the station is now working with NPR and law enforcement to investigate the scam, as reported by WHYY. The fraudulent messages used the address [email protected] and impersonated Terry Gross, Tonya Mosley and other Fresh Air staff, according to the outlet's reporting.
The scammers asked Black to pay $250 for production costs, but she said the pitch struck her as AI-generated and that the con artists played to targets' vanity by flattering her about her book. WHYY has been direct about what legitimate contact from the show looks like: the station does not charge guests to be interviewed, and it does not pay people for interviews on its programs. The outlet said any communications asking for a fee or offering interview payment should be treated as illegitimate.
A Wider Web of AI-Fueled Impersonation
Black wasn't alone, and the scheme reaches well beyond public radio. Ai-fueled scammers have impersonated Terry Gross, WHYY, NPR and the Fresh Air production team while also targeting authors, entertainers and other public figures more broadly, per the station's reporting. The same fraud network reportedly impersonated Nikki Glaser, Amy Poehler and Katie Couric in similar schemes.
Comedy writer Bruce Vilanch received a similar email that appeared legitimate, per The Philadelphia Inquirer, and was promised compensation after conducting the interview. The Inquirer reported that Vilanch sent money to a scammer posing as Gross after being told NPR needed financial support due to public broadcasting budget cuts, and he only realized he had been defrauded after logging onto a virtual video call where Gross never appeared. The same paper reported that Harvard psychologist and author Steven Pinker was targeted in early 2026 by a similar catfishing attempt involving a fraudster using a spoofed Gmail address in Gross's name, showing the campaign had been active for months before the public alerts.
Some scam targets were directed to provide social-media login credentials rather than money. Broadway actor Seth Rudetsky was targeted by scammers offering $4,000 to appear on comedian Nikki Glaser's podcast, who then manipulated him into surrendering his Facebook admin permissions during a Zoom “tech check,” according to reporting by Jezebel. A February 2026 industry alert by RSS.com detailed that podcast guest scams regularly use these pre-interview tech checks to manipulate victims into sharing screens or altering account settings, allowing fraudsters to hijack high-follower social media accounts. Online author groups on Facebook documented receiving AI-generated email invitations purportedly from Gross requesting wire transfers to foreign bank accounts as early as April.
Why These Scams Are Getting Harder to Spot
Aunshul Rege, a Temple University professor specializing in cybersecurity and social engineering, classified the scam as social engineering and said credible invitations can make AI-enabled scams harder to identify. Rege told WHYY that artificial intelligence has turbocharged old-school scams. Past scam messages tended to be typo-riddled messages sent to large populations, but this campaign's personalized, well-researched pitches mark a departure from that pattern.
Siwei Lyu, director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at the University at Buffalo, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that generative AI enables scam scripts to be rapidly adapted and reused by multiple unrelated actors, making authors especially vulnerable because of the flattery and plausibility of unexpected interview requests. Rege advised recipients to verify suspicious requests through legitimate organizational contacts, and advised organizations to monitor scam reports and publicize incidents. Rege also said AI-enabled scams may become more sophisticated going forward.
A Bigger Fraud Problem Nationwide
The Terry Gross impersonation scheme fits into a much larger surge in impersonation fraud across the country. Data released by the Federal Trade Commission in June revealed that Americans reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, a nearly threefold increase since 2020, making impersonation the single most reported fraud category in the United States. Meta reported that it shut down over 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts linked to criminal scam centers during the first half of 2025, citing an increasing reliance on AI-generated messages to execute social-engineering attacks, according to KVIA.
Federal regulators have some tools to fight back, though gaps remain. Under the FTC's Trade Regulation Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses, which took effect in April 2024, entities that misrepresent affiliation with legitimate businesses face civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation alongside court-ordered consumer refunds. But that rule covers business impersonation, not necessarily the impersonation of an individual like Terry Gross. The FTC held informal public hearings in January 2025 on a proposed amendment that would explicitly ban impersonation of individual public figures and private citizens, a sign that protections for people like Gross are still being worked out at the federal level.
For now, WHYY's message to authors, entertainers and anyone else who gets an unsolicited invitation to appear on Fresh Air is simple: verify it directly with the station before sending money or credentials anywhere. Jennifer M. Black's decision to make that call may have spared her a costly and embarrassing mistake, and it helped expose a scam that has already reached far beyond her own inbox.
