'Grandma' comes up savage trick to get revenge on scammers and waste their time

A "grandma" is utilising a savage trick to to get revengewho, in many cases, lead elderly people to part with cash.

Daisy appears to be the dream target for a scammer who is more than happy to have a chat and hand over bank details. But the seemingly innocent Daisy keeps to criminals on the phone for as long as 40 minutes by chatting to them about knitting and her family.

That is because she does not actually exist. Daisy is an AI character designed by 02 to take revenge on scammers and has done exactly that for the past few weeks. YouTube scambaiter Jim Browning helped train up the AI who can interact with crooks in real time without needing any external input from her creators.

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Her antics and easy going nature means it takes scammers a long time to realise that she will not hand over any money. Daisy does this by combining various AI models to work together to listen and respond to fraudulent claims within an instant.

In 2023, there were 1,158,550 fraud offences in England and Wales. The total in the UK doubled to £2.3 billion.

Reality TV star Amy Hart has worked with Daisy after becoming a target of scammers herself, according to . She fell victim to a scam that drained £5,000 from her account after someone said they were calling from her bank on the morning of her friend's wedding.

Director of fraud at Virgin Media 02 Murray Mackenzie said: "We’re committed to playing our part in stopping the scammers, investing in everything from firewall to block out scam texts to AI-powered spam call detection to keep our customers safe.

"The newest member of our fraud-prevention team, Daisy, is turning the tables on scammers – outsmarting and outmanoeuvring them at their own cruel game simply by keeping them on the line.

"But crucially, Daisy is also a reminder that no matter how persuasive someone on the other end of the phone may be, they aren’t always who you think they are. With scammers operating fulltime call centres specifically to target Brits, we’re urging everyone to remain vigilant and help play their part in stopping fraud by forwarding on dodgy calls and texts to 7726 for free."