The XRP community continues to fight against a threat that it does not always see coming. After Brad Garlinghouse's fake Instagram account, a new wave of AI-powered scams hit at the XRP Las Vegas conference. This time, the scammers refined their method, and directly targeted participants on site.
In brief
- Scammers created fake profiles via AI to contact XRP conference attendees.
- The objective of these criminals is to initiate romantic scams to extract crypto funds.
- Ripple recently alerted its community to the increase in fraud using artificial intelligence.
AI to trap participants in Las Vegas
An XRP Ledger validator sounded the alarm on Friday morning during the conference. Profiles of women, invariably photographed in glamorous outfits in front of the event's official banner, began contacting participants via private messages. The problem lies in the fact that these interlocutors absolutely do not exist.
Their photos were entirely generated by AI. The conference brought together major figures in the sector, including Brad Garlinghouse and David Schwartz, at the Paris casino in Las Vegas. Participants often spent several hundred dollars on tickets, accommodation and transportation.
These expenses constitute strong signals for fraudsters looking for profitable prey. The mechanics of romantic scams, also called pig slaughter, remain extremely well-established.
The principle consists of establishing a relationship of trust via X or Instagram, before switching to encrypted messaging. The victim is then gradually tricked into sending crypto or investing on fake platforms.
A growing threat in the crypto industry
Ripple is not sounding the alarm for the first time. Indeed, last April, David Schwartz reported a fake Instagram account impersonating Garlinghouse to promote an alleged competition. In November, the company warned its owners against the proliferation of deepfakes after its Swell conference.
The XRP community becomes a recurring target precisely because it is large, engaged and often enthusiastic about receiving messages. On a global scale, the phenomenon is taking on alarming industrial proportions. Hong Kong police recently took down a network that used AI face-swapping technologies during video calls.
This maneuver was used in particular to pose as attractive women and made it possible to extort approximately 46 million dollars in Asia. In the United States, the FBI has identified more than $11.4 billion in losses related to crypto fraud in 2024. According to data relayed by Protosmore than 900 million are attributable to romantic scams alone.
Americans over 60 have also paid the highest price, with $7.7 billion lost to cybercrimes in 2025, the age group most affected, by far.
The events in Las Vegas will not stop at this conference alone. This is a sign of a worrying development: scammers are no longer just looking to exploit naivety, they are now exploiting enthusiasm, community trust, and the power of AI.
As long as crypto regulations do not equip themselves with concrete tools to track down and sanction these large-scale frauds, the next XRP conference, like all the others, will remain an ideal hunting ground.
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