Deepfake video call scams global firm out of $39 million

By James Titcomb
February 8, 2024

London: A finance worker has been tricked into paying $39 million to scammers by a “deepfake” video call featuring AI versions of his co-workers, police in Hong Kong have said.

The employee transferred the money ($HK200 million) to the criminals after they used artificial intelligence software to imitate his superiors, including his UK-based chief financial officer.

Everybody on the video call apart from the victim was a fake representation of a real person, police said.

Real or realistic? Workers now need to also be alert to the possibility of deepfake impersonation in video calls.

The case is believed to be one of the largest financial scams to date featuring deepfake technology.
The company and the individual affected have not been named.

Hong Kong police said they were making the case public because it was the first of its kind involving multiple fake people on a call.

“This time, in a multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone you see is fake,” acting Senior Superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching said, according to the South China Morning Post.

The employee, who transferred the sum in 15 transactions involving five bank accounts, was suspicious when he received an email purporting to be from his chief financial officer, police said.

Multiple people at the company were reportedly targeted with the phishing message.

However, he was convinced to arrange the payment after apparently verifying the request on the video call.

Deepfakes have improved dramatically in recent years with advances in artificial intelligence technology. It allows scammers to assume a person’s likeness and imitate their voice with minutes or even seconds of publicly available video footage for reference.

The victim only realised he had been scammed when he grew suspicious and contacted the company’s headquarters to verify that the transaction was genuine.

Deepfake video calls have been used in financial scams before, but typically in one-on-one communications, which are easier to create.

Fake audio, which is also easier to produce, was used in 2019 to trick a worker at an unnamed British energy company to pay £200,000 ($388,000) to a scammer impersonating their boss.

Deepfake videos involving imitations of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have been used by Facebook scammers to run more than 100 advertisements, according to researchers.

Last month, the social media platform X rushed to take down fake explicit images featuring the popstar Taylor Swift, after the images went viral on the service.

Microsoft later altered an AI tool used to make images after suggestions the pictures may have been made using the software.

The Telegraph, London