New York targets fake accounts that steal your voice

In New York, a fake account that sounds like you, looks like you or borrows your voice can do real damage before anyone catches on. A proposal in Albany would create a new offense called false pretense for people who knowingly and without consent impersonate another person through a website, digital platform, AI system, deepfake, synthetic media or other electronic means to harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud them.

The Barakett digital safety act also reaches hacked email accounts and social-media profiles used in someone else’s name. The point is to give prosecutors a cleaner way to name a kind of online deception that can quickly turn personal, financial and frightening.

When a fake becomes a crime

Under the bill, the impersonation has to be credible, meaning a reasonable person would believe the impersonator was the real person. That standard matters because the measure is aimed at the kind of online fraud that can pass for the real thing, from cloned voices to synthetic videos and messages sent from a stolen account.

By default, false pretense would be a class A misdemeanor. The bill treats the conduct as a lower-level offense when it is deceptive but does not cross into the harder harms spelled out in the measure.

Where the charge gets heavier

The penalty would rise to a class D felony if the impersonation causes more than $1,000 in financial loss, includes a credible threat of physical harm, or uses AI, deepfakes or synthetic media for fraud, extortion or substantial reputational, professional or economic harm.

That makes the bill less about punishing embarrassment and more about the damage that follows a convincing fake, whether the loss is money, safety or a job. It also adds a civil-rights section alongside the criminal offense, reinforcing that identity theft by imitation can reach far beyond an annoying message or a bad joke.