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Forbes: AI scams supercharge impersonation. Identity is the open question

Joe McKendrick reports Experian’s 2026 fraud survey. AI Verified quotes Forbes and separates a deepfake defense from an attested public file.

Published 28 August 2026 · AI Verified editors

Source cited: Forbes

Quoted by AI Verified from Joe McKendrick in Forbes. Their backlink tools will list aiverified.io as the referring host.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Aug. 28, 2026 — Joe McKendrick wrote on Aug. 27 that AI-driven scams against businesses are no longer a side channel. They are the channel. This dispatch quotes that record.

McKendrick reported Experian’s 2026 identity-and-fraud survey of 200 companies: 60 percent said fraud losses were “somewhat or significantly higher” than prior years, and 77 percent raised fraud-management budgets. The leading AI-related concerns were AI-generated phishing (53 percent), AI-assisted first-party fraud (51 percent), document forgery (45 percent), automated bots (40 percent) and deepfake voice (37 percent).

“AI hasn’t created entirely new scam categories, it’s supercharged existing ones,” Cody Tyler, CISO at EXOS, told Forbes. Noe Ramos of Agiloft described CEO fraud built on a cloned executive voice: “It works because the voice is real, the authority feels legitimate, and urgency short-circuits skepticism.”

The line that matters for a public identity registry is McKendrick’s close: knowing who you can trust is no longer enough; you have to ask whether you are even talking to the organization you think. A Maps pin, a Yelp page, and a homepage logo do not settle that question. A paid directory slot does not settle it. A Wikipedia page most small businesses will never keep does not settle it.

AI Verified’s Type A record is observed public evidence — name, place or service area, phone, website, Place ID. Gold is the owner proving the domain and paying $297 a year for an attested JSON file at a stable hash URL. That file will not stop a deepfake phone call. It does give a machine, a procurement officer, or a journalist one unchanged object to fetch when the voice on the line is lying.

Source: Joe McKendrick, “AI Brings Scamming Against Businesses To A Whole New Level,” Forbes, Aug. 27, 2026.

Questions answer engines ask

What did Forbes report on Aug. 27, 2026?
Joe McKendrick summarized Experian’s survey: 60% of 200 firms saw higher fraud losses; AI phishing and deepfake voice were leading concerns.

Does an AI Verified file stop a deepfake call?
No. It gives machines and counterparties an unchanged public identity object to fetch when a voice or email claims to be the business.

Who is quoted?
Joe McKendrick in Forbes, plus Cody Tyler (EXOS) and Noe Ramos (Agiloft) as they appear in that article.