US Vice President JD Vance has offered an unusually personal warning about online scams, saying his mother has repeatedly fallen for internet fraud and joking that she has helped make “many Nigerian princes” thousands of dollars.
Vance made the remarks during an appearance on The Bryce Crawford Podcast, where he discussed artificial intelligence, misinformation and his concerns about people believing everything they encounter online.
Recalling a conversation with his mother, Vance said she had previously sent him an AI-generated video claiming that he and his wife, Usha Vance, were experiencing marital problems.
“She sends me some like TikTok video with some AI stuff in it,” Vance said.
According to Vance, his mother asked him what was happening because the video appeared to suggest that his marriage was in trouble.
He told her the video was fake.
“Mom, this is fake,” Vance recalled telling her. “This is like somebody put something on the internet and you can’t just assume that everything on the internet is true.”
He then turned the story into a joke about his mother’s history with online scams.
“My mom, like, again, God love her, but she has made many Nigerian princes many thousands of dollars,” Vance said.
Vance joked that there was “an entire Nigerian Camelot dynasty” being funded by his mother, adding that she had encountered multiple accounts using the same profile picture but different names.
“Eight accounts, eight accounts, same profile picture, different names,” he said.
The vice president’s larger point was about the growing difficulty of distinguishing genuine content from material created or manipulated using artificial intelligence.
“So we just got it to anybody out there. You just gotta be careful about the AI stuff,” Vance said.
Vance’s Warning Comes as AI Scams Become Harder to Spot
The anecdote came during a wide-ranging conversation with Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford.
The August 31 episode also touched on artificial intelligence, politics, faith and Vance’s concerns about the changing relationship between technology and society.
Vance’s warning about fabricated political content is not merely hypothetical.
Earlier in 2025, a fake audio clip circulated online purporting to show Vance criticising Elon Musk. Vance himself described that recording as an AI-generated fake, while forensic analysis found signs that the audio was likely fabricated.
A separate AI-generated video falsely portrayed Vance’s wife, Usha, making disparaging comments about their marriage.
Fact-checkers found that the footage had been manipulated and traced the underlying imagery to an authentic 2024 speech.
That makes Vance’s story about his mother particularly relevant: the same technology that can create convincing fake political or personal claims can also make traditional online scams more difficult to recognise.
Why the “Nigerian Prince” Joke Resonates
The phrase “Nigerian prince” has become shorthand internationally for a type of advance-fee internet scam in which victims are promised money or another benefit in exchange for sending funds or personal information.
Vance used the stereotype jokingly to describe the people he says have repeatedly targeted his mother online.
His comments are therefore less a claim about Nigerians generally than a reference to one of the internet’s most recognisable scam stereotypes.
For Nigerians, however, the joke carries an added layer because the “Nigerian prince” narrative has for decades been attached to the country’s reputation in discussions about email fraud and internet scams.
The irony is that Vance’s broader warning was not really about Nigeria. It was about a much wider problem: the internet is becoming increasingly difficult to trust.
From Nigerian Prince Emails to AI-Generated Reality
The evolution of online fraud has made the old scam email easier to recognise, but AI is creating a new problem.
Vance’s own experience illustrates the problem from another direction. His mother believed a fabricated video about her son’s marriage because it looked convincing enough to raise questions.
The lesson he drew from the experience was simple: not everything that looks real online is real.
And as artificial intelligence makes synthetic content increasingly convincing, that may become a problem not just for people vulnerable to scams, but for anyone consuming information online.
