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US Vice President James David Vance has used a personal family story to illustrate the growing threat of online fraud, joking that his mother has sent thousands of dollars to scammers posing as Nigerian royalty.
During a podcast appearance on Sunday, Vance recounted that his mother once shared an AI-generated video falsely depicting marital problems between him and his wife, Usha.
After Vance explained the video was fabricated, he quipped that his mother had a history of being deceived online.
“My mom, like, again, God loves her, but she has made many Nigerian princes many thousands of dollars,” Vance said on The Bryce Crawford Podcast.
He added that there was “an entire Nigerian Camelot dynasty” being funded by his mother.
Vance noted that she had encountered multiple accounts using the same profile photo but different names.
“Eight accounts, eight accounts, same profile picture, different names,” he said.
The reference to “Nigerian princes” is a widely recognised shorthand for advance-fee scams, a type of internet fraud in which victims are promised a large sum of money in exchange for sending funds or personal information.
The scheme, which originated in the 1980s, often involves scammers posing as members of royal families, government officials or business executives.
Vance’s broader message was about how artificial intelligence is making online scams more convincing and harder to detect.
“So we just got it to anybody out there. You just gotta be careful about the AI stuff,” Vance said.
