A 76-year-old was about to lose his entire $3 million retirement to a scam. TIAA’s AI caught it—but a human prevented disaster

Artificial intelligence has ushered in a new era for scammers. Within seconds, the technology can clone voices, generate convincing emails, and create realistic deepfakes capable of tricking victims into handing over life savings.

Put simply by TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett on an episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast: “There are so many scams.”

But the same technology is also helping humans detect suspicious behavior before money disappears. Recently, TIAA flagged an unusual request from a 76-year-old customer attempting to withdraw his entire $3 million retirement portfolio. According to Duckett, the retiree had been targeted by a scammer—but the company’s AI system was first to notice something was off.

“He was being scammed, but our AI tool flagged it,” she said. A portfolio manager then escalated the out-of-pattern withdrawal to TIAA’s fraud team, which spent hours trying to convince the customer he was being deceived.

“The first thing is you don’t want to believe you’ve been scammed,” Duckett said. “You’ve almost been trained to defend the scam.” Eventually, a fraud specialist contacted the man’s daughter, and TIAA stopped the money from moving.

“Our participant said to us,........

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