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<\/p>\nWhen a man named Sergio messaged Pastor Jennifer LeClaire insisting she had promised him a personal phone call and prophetic counseling, she assumed it was a misunderstanding.<\/p>\n
Though he was an avid follower of the South Florida pastor\u2019s morning prayer broadcast on Facebook, LeClaire didn\u2019t know him.<\/p>\n
Sergio told LeClaire that he was still waiting for her to deliver on what she had promised him. He even threatened to call the police.<\/p>\n
But what Sergio had encountered was a deepfake video of LeClaire circulating online. The artificial intelligence\u2013generated video was made to look and sound like LeClaire, preaching in what looked like her familiar home setting and addressing Sergio in her distinctive tone. The scammer used the fabricated video to gain Sergio\u2019s trust \u2014 and eventually asked him for money.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt sorry for him and tried to explain that this was not me, but he could not be convinced,\u201d said LeClaire, pastor of a nondenominational Christian church in Davie called Awakening House of Prayer.<\/p>\n
LeClaire, who has a following of nearly 600,000 on YouTube, joins a small but growing number of faith leaders who have encountered a concerning technological trend: AI-generated videos, called deepfakes, imitating pastors to spread false messages and scam congregants out of their money.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Deepfakes are a type of synthetic content created or modified by artificial intelligence. Though they have been around for years, the methods to create them are becoming more accessible, opening the door for scammers. Now, the deepfakes have found their way to church.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is essentially hijacking someone\u2019s identity and putting words in their mouth, making promises they don\u2019t intend to keep, and potentially compromising the integrity of the pastor,\u201d said LeClaire. Sergio eventually stopped messaging LeClaire so she never found out how much he paid to scammers.<\/p>\n
Rev. Christopher Benek, pastor at First Miami Presbyterian Church in Miami and an expert in the field of religion and technology, said it\u2019s important for church leaders to build trust with congregants and teach them how to spot the scammers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to tell people, just because someone\u2019s in the church, if they ask you for money, don\u2019t give it to them,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s teaching people to actually have some discernment about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benek sees deepfakes as the next iteration of the email phishing scams that became a problem for pastors in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
\u201cLittle old ladies would send money, thinking they\u2019re helping the church, only to find out they got scammed,\u201d said Benek.<\/p>\n
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some aspects to look for in a deepfake are visual distortions and warped images, unsettling silences and distorted sound. Things like video inconsistencies, unnatural movement, poor video or audio quality can also be warning signs of faked images.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, LeClaire posted a video warning her followers about the deepfake that had been circulating of her. She posted part of the AI-generated video, asking her followers to spot the differences. Being proactive and educating people is key, she said, in helping followers spot similar scams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re preying on the trusted believers on my good name, exploiting their faith for their own wicked ends,\u201d she said in the video with over 14,000 views.<\/p>\n
Beyond her church , LeCLaire has built a robust online community, made up of thousands of followers \u2014 many who look to her for advice on topics she preaches about daily, including how to engage in spiritual warfare and defeat worldly demons.<\/p>\n
She has international followers, some of whom, like Sergio, don\u2019t speak English as their first language. LeClaire said she thinks this could be a factor in why he believed the deepfake to be real.<\/p>\n
In the deepfake, pastor LeClaire, though a bit fuzzy and distorted, spoke with authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease be at peace, this is Jennifer. Now Satan is just trying to confuse you,\u201d the AI LeClaire said. \u201cCheer up and let\u2019s get more better in Christ Jesus together.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest tell of the fake video, LeClaire said, was the poor grammar. Some commenters took note.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow, anyone who has ever seen or heard Jennifer would be able to tell something was off,\u201d one said. \u201cYou don\u2019t speak like this, and you don\u2019t blink that much,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n
Father Rafael Cap\u00f3, a Catholic priest in Miami with a growing social media following, said he has experienced similar AI-perpetuated scams.<\/p>\n
A religious digital influencer, Cap\u00f3 uses social media as a way to spread the message of the Catholic Church. His bodybuilding videos blend faith with fitness, gaining him international attention and over 112,000 followers on Instagram. But with that celebrity-like status also comes risk.<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, he\u2019s started to see more and more fake profiles of himself popping up on the internet. Using AI, scammers created a false profile of Cap\u00f3 and then sent messages to his followers, often asking for money for a made-up ministry.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt all comes down to identity theft, creating images and videos and using their tools to try to get your identity and misuse it to get money. It\u2019s unfortunate,\u201d said Cap\u00f3, who is also the vice president of mission and ministry and dean of Theology at St. Thomas University.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been struggle to keep the scams under control, Cap\u00f3 said. And the target is not just older people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would get messages from young people. \u2018Father, is this social media profile yours?,\u2019\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cap\u00f3 received hundreds of messages from followers who came across the fake profiles. The scams decreased, he said, after social media platforms started using multifactor verifications to secure his real profile.<\/p>\n
Another 21st century scam he\u2019s encountered: clergy are being targeted by scammers who have created fake charities and reached out to Cap\u00f3 online, hoping the empathetic faith leader might donate money.<\/p>\n
The Catholic Church is aware of the implications of emerging technologies such as AI. At a recent conference for digital evangelizers and Catholic influencers, Pope Leo XIV noted how to harness the potential benefits of AI while recognizing that there are bad actors out there using it to accumulate wealth and power for the few.<\/p>\n
Leo said humans are meant to be \u201cco-workers in the work of creation,\u201d not merely passive consumers of AI-generated content. He raised other issues, including the potential impacts AI can have on a child\u2019s growth and development, and the concerns he has about AI\u2019s effects on \u201chumanity\u2019s openness to truth and beauty,\u201d and capacity for creativity.<\/p>\n
Father Cap\u00f3 sums it up: \u201cChurches need to be a voice for how AI and all the digital platforms … are at the service of the human person and not attacking the human person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benek said these new sophisticated scams further erode trust in religious institutions \u2014 most of which have dealt with some sort of scandal in recent memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had so many failures in the church that we should be learning from those things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Benek said he understands being fearful of powerful technology, but points out that AI is already being used by churches and other institutions. He believes that it\u2019s up to faith leaders to embrace AI and adapt the church accordingly \u2014 just like religious institutions have done with past technological advancements.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the goal for pastors, Benek said, is to protect the message of the church amid the new technological advancement. It\u2019s also about identifying the potential risks, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re online, and you\u2019re using more tech tools, you\u2019re going to be more susceptible to some of those things,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not to say \u2018don\u2019t use tech tools.\u2019 It\u2019s to discern and say \u2018what are our risks?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For LeClaire, the deepfake experience brought up other concerns about how AI can be used to harm a pastor\u2019s reputation. She worries that AI could also be used to spread \u201cpolarizing messages, false prophecies,\u201d or be used to generate images of religious leaders doing illicit activities like \u201csnorting cocaine.\u201d<\/p>\n
As long as people are seeking help from pastors and faith leaders, the scams will arise, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is going to get better and better, and it will be more and more difficult to discern the true from the false, unless you really know someone\u2019s heart,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This story was produced with financial support from Trish and Dan Bell and donors in South Florida\u2019s Jewish and Muslim communities, including Khalid and Diana Mirza and the Mohsin and Fauzia Jaffer Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a man named Sergio messaged Pastor Jennifer LeClaire insisting she had promised him a personal phone call…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[82518,24320,82521,28,30,29,82519,82520,25527],"class_list":["post-173868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-christopher-benek","tag-faith-leaders","tag-fake-profiles","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-rafael-capo","tag-sergio-messaged-pastor-jennifer-leclaire","tag-st-thomas-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}