In recent months, hundreds of people in Estonia have received scam calls from fraudsters claiming to be from the Health Insurance Fund. In May alone, 15 people lost a total of €400,000 through this scheme.

"People are told either that they owe money for some healthcare service or that they are entitled to a benefit they have not yet claimed, such as the dental care benefit. That's how they hook people, trying to obtain their PIN1 and PIN2 codes, whether through Smart-ID or Digi-ID," explained Rainet Juuse, head of the criminal bureau at the PPA's Ida Prefecture.

"Our most recent case, from last week, involved over €200,000 being stolen from a person through this Health Insurance Fund scheme. At first, the scammer posed as a Health Insurance Fund employee, then as a Swedbank security officer — twice. At least two or three Estonian-speaking operators were involved in this scheme," Juuse said.

Raul Vahtra, head of Swedbank's Financial Crime Prevention Division, said you should never hand over your PIN codes.

"If someone calls you and, at some point during the conversation, asks you to confirm something using PIN codes, it is 100 percent a scam. You should never do it. Even if you go to the bank in person, an employee will never ask for your PIN codes. Banks don't need to contact customers to stop fraud. They halt suspicious transactions on their own, without consultation, and follow up afterward," he said.

Real Estonians or AI?

But this is only one of many schemes. A few weeks ago, a company lost €1.7 million and the crime is now being investigated by the police.

But what makes the Health Insurance Fund scam particularly notable is that it was conducted in Estonian. These kinds of scam calls only started to be reported two or three months ago.

Are the callers real people, or artificial intelligence capable of speaking Estonian?

"To our knowledge, these are still real people. I am not aware of a specific AI-based scam model in use yet. We do know that call centers have been actively recruiting Estonian-speaking operators for some time now, and it seems they have finally succeeded," Juuse said.

The police believe these individuals are likely operating from outside Estonia. Still, artificial intelligence is learning Estonian so rapidly that convincing scam calls created with its help are likely just a matter of time.

"For speech synthesis, grammar is not necessary. It is enough to convert text into speech. I think we are only a couple of years away from a situation where a person can no longer distinguish, based on voice alone, whether it's a synthesized or natural voice," said Tanel Alumäe, head of the Language Technology Lab at TalTech's Department of Software Science.

However, if a person gives a scammer their Smart-ID or PIN codes, it becomes extremely difficult for the bank to intervene or return the money. The funds are transferred within seconds through multiple accounts using instant payments, and the trail often ends in a cryptocurrency wallet, abroad, or as cash withdrawals.

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