Dark Side of the Boom: How Scammers Hijacked the AI Revolution is an eye-opening guide that reveals how cybercriminals are exploiting artificial intelligence to fuel deepfakes, scams, and digital fraud—and what we can do to protect ourselves. Author Patrick Coughlin talks to Book Glow about the book.

Dark Side of the Boom shifts the AI conversation away from distant future scenarios and toward the very real threats people are facing today. What inspired you to focus on the immediate human impact of AI-powered scams rather than the more commonly discussed debates about AI’s long-term future?

I’ve worked in national security and cyber security for large Fortune 500 enterprises. But, when my mom was targeted by a fake kidnapping scam this threat became personal.

That experience showed me something the AI policy conversation was completely missing. While everyone was debating whether AI would eventually become sentient or take all our jobs, AI was already being weaponized against ordinary people right now. Not in some theoretical future. The FTC estimates that Americans lost almost $200 billion to scams last year. This is not a thought experiment. It is a crisis that is already here, and most people have no idea how bad it has gotten.

So, I wrote the book because I wanted to contribute to a conversation that I believe needs more attention around the role that AI is playing in our society right now.

You write about digital fraud becoming one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world. Were there any statistics, case studies, or stories you encountered during your research that particularly surprised or alarmed you?

While market analysts and traders are wringing their hands around whether AI investments will produce business outcomes and ROI for companies, I was surprised to see how fast organized crime syndicates were adopting these tools for their operations and seeing immediate impact. From my research, it’s clear that the most profitable early adopters of AI right now are cybercriminal organizations. Research shows that those that are using AI are able to generate significantly more scam campaigns that extract more fraud revenue than their less AI-inclined criminal peers.

Your mother’s experience with an AI-powered impersonation scam made this issue personal. How did that experience influence the direction of the book and your approach to explaining these threats to everyday readers?

My mom’s experience opened my eyes to the sophistication and scale of digital fraud in this country. If she could be targeted with such a personalized campaign then we are all at risk from a threat that we are not properly equipped to handle.

Governments and large enterprises are staffed, equipped and funded to play the cat-and-mouse game of digital defense against well-armed adversaries, but the everyday consumer is not.

We have more work to do to help innovate on behalf of consumer digital protection. We have more work to do culturally to build new rituals of verification and more responsibility in the ecosystem of tech platforms. Only then can we prevent these crimes from eroding our trust in the technology we need to communicate and connect in this world.

Many people still believe they could easily recognize a scam. How has artificial intelligence changed the game for cybercriminals, and why are even cautious, tech-savvy individuals increasingly vulnerable?

In the book, we bring readers into the scam as it’s happening so they can see first-hand the way victims from all walks of life and with all levels of technical aptitude are manipulated by today’s AI-powered scammers.

Too often, when somebody is the victim of fraud or a scam, we say, “how could you fall for that?” when we should be saying, “I’m sorry that happened to you, these scammers have gotten so good at their jobs!”.

We have to remove shame from the equation because it not only isolates victims and leads to mental health challenges long after the money is gone, but it also keeps people from reporting the crime.

Digital fraud is both the fastest growing crime in the country and the most underreported. When we don’t have statistics about the real impact, it’s hard as a society to invest in the right countermeasures and protections. So, we have to start with removing the stigma and the shame for victims.

The book explores the organized criminal networks and underground economies that fuel modern fraud. What do you most want readers to understand about the scale and sophistication of these operations?

These criminal organizations operate like sophisticated, tech-enabled businesses, except instead of creating customers and value, they create victims and devastating losses. Tens of millions of Americans are being scammed every year and it hits across demographics. Older Americans have more savings and so are disproportionately targeted. When they are victimized, the average loss is north of $30,000. The devastation and disruption that creates on the entire family is enormous.

Deepfake voices, fabricated images, and highly personalized phishing attempts can feel unsettling and overwhelming. What practical steps can individuals and families take today to better protect themselves from AI-enabled deception?

The good news is that the most effective defenses are simple and free. It starts with talking about this problem more and making it OK to ask for help. In the book, I talk about creating new rituals. One example is establishing a family safe word. Pick a simple code word that only your family knows. If you ever get a distressing call that sounds like a loved one, ask for the safe word. If they cannot give it to you, hang up. Talk about scenarios where you might use this and practice it. It’s an easy way to introduce the conversation.

We also talk about the importance of recognizing ‘hot zone moments’ where you have received an unexpected message or call that comes with a high-stakes situation where urgency is paramount. Inevitably there is an ask for money or your credentials. In these moments, the best thing to do is to pause and do a second-channel verification. If your bank calls, hang up and call the number on the back of your card. If your boss emails asking for a wire transfer, walk down the hall or call them on their cell. Never verify through the same channel the request came from.

This practice inspired us at Savi Security to create a free tool, scamwise.com. You can upload a screenshot of a text, forward an email to submit@scamwise.com or just paste a message and we will give you a quick, free and accurate assessment of the content. We’ll also recommend next steps and other channels you can use to verify. Scamwise helps thousands of people every day put second channel verifications into practice.

Throughout your career, you’ve worked at the intersection of technology, intelligence, and security. How did your professional experiences shape the insights and real-world examples featured in Dark Side of the Boom?

I have studied how bad guys use technology to do harm for more than 20 years. The skills I learned in terms of analyzing networks of criminals and threat actors were re-activated as I researched the scam syndicates and fraud rings around the world, from eastern Europe to Asia, west Africa and right here in our own backyard.

I took the practice I had in writing intelligence reports and building solution briefs for governments and enterprises and applied them to this unprecedented problem facing consumers everyday.

One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its focus on the human side of cybercrime. Why is it important to understand the psychology behind scams rather than viewing them solely as technological threats?

Because technology is just the delivery mechanism. The actual weapon is psychology. Every scam, whether it uses AI or not, works by exploiting a small number of deeply human vulnerabilities: our trust in familiar voices and faces, our response to urgency and fear, our desire to help people we love, our reluctance to question authority.

When we treat scams as purely technological problems, we end up with purely technological solutions — better spam filters, more sophisticated fraud detection. Those things absolutely matter and we need more innovation, but they will never be enough on their own.

When you realize that these attacks are engineered to exploit the way every human brain works under stress, you stop blaming people for falling for them. That shift — from blame to understanding — is essential and the first step to better defense.

As both a cybersecurity expert and the CEO of a company focused on protecting families from scams, what trends concern you most about the future of AI-powered fraud over the next five years?

We are already seeing early versions of autonomous scam agents. These are AI tools or systems that can initiate contact, hold a conversation, adapt to the victim’s responses, and escalate through multiple channels and facilitate payment without any human involvement. As these agents get more capable, a single criminal organization will be able to target millions of people simultaneously with highly personalized attacks.

The economics of fraud are about to get much worse and enable these scammers to push deeper into your trusted communities and networks. We will see an evolution from imposter scammers that impersonate the IRS or a well-known brand, to more localized brands, like the principal at your kid’s school, your pastor or your favorite yoga instructor.

As this trust hijacking moves closer to our communities, we’ll put more strain on how we communicate and engage with the outside world. My hope in writing the book is that we can contain it and begin to fight back, because the worst outcome is that we abandon the beneficial power of technology and let the scammers win.

After reading Dark Side of the Boom, what is the single most important lesson or mindset shift you hope readers will carry with them as they navigate an increasingly AI-driven world?

We grew up in a world where our senses were reliable. If you heard your daughter’s voice, it was your daughter. If you saw your bank’s logo in an email, it was your bank. If someone looked you in the eye on a video call, they were real. None of that is guaranteed anymore.

I do not want people to become paranoid or to stop trusting each other. I want them to build simple verification habits into their lives. I want them to invest in digital protection the same way we protect ourselves, our homes, our cars and things we value in the physical world.

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