A phone call promising savings on an electric bill may sound legitimate, but Florida Power & Light officials are warning customers that scammers are increasingly using artificial intelligence to impersonate utility representatives in an effort to steal personal and financial information.<\/p>\n
The scam, which has been reported across South Florida, uses AI-generated voices that sound friendly and convincing, making it more difficult for customers to distinguish between legitimate customer service calls and fraud.<\/p>\n
“Scammers are using AI-generated voices to pose as an FPL employee… call the customer sounding very real, very friendly,” said Bianca Soriano, a spokesperson for Florida Power & Light.<\/p>\n
According to FPL, scammers often contact customers claiming they qualify for a rebate, discount or energy-saving program. In some cases, callers claim immediate action is required to avoid losing benefits or to resolve an issue with the customer’s account.<\/p>\n
While FPL does offer legitimate rebate and energy-efficiency programs, Soriano said customers should be cautious of anyone demanding immediate action over the phone.<\/p>\n
“We do offer rebates. It’s on\u00a0FPL.com\/programs. However, we are not going to put that kind of urgency on our customers and make them take action right away or give us personal information on the phone,” Soriano said.<\/p>\n
The scam is not limited to phone calls.<\/p>\n
FPL said customers have also reported receiving fraudulent text messages claiming that “FPL Net Metering is currently open.” The messages advertise steep discounts and offer free 15-minute inspections by engineers in an apparent attempt to lure customers into sharing personal information or clicking malicious links.<\/p>\n
Soriano said those text messages are also fraudulent.<\/p>\n
How to protect yourself<\/p>\n
FPL recommends several steps to help customers avoid becoming victims of utility scams:<\/p>\n
Do not trust caller ID alone. Scammers can manipulate phone numbers and display names to make calls appear as though they are coming from FPL.<\/p>\n
Remember that FPL will never demand immediate payment or require customers to pay using gift cards, Zelle or other peer-to-peer payment apps.<\/p>\n
Avoid clicking on links in unsolicited text messages or emails.<\/p>\n
If you receive an unexpected call claiming to be from FPL, hang up and call the customer service number printed on your electric bill to verify the request.<\/p>\n
“So, anything that feels demanding, urgent… is not from us,” Soriano said. “Just simply hang up the phone. Even if you do feel sure it is us, it’s better just to hang up and call the number on your bill.”<\/p>\n
FPL encourages anyone who receives a suspicious phone call, email or text message claiming to be from the company to report it through the utility’s online scam reporting tool. Consumers can also file complaints with local law enforcement and the Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A phone call promising savings on an electric bill may sound legitimate, but Florida Power & Light officials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,3844],"class_list":["post-118356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-scams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}