Warning: Fraudsters Use Deepfake Technology to Deceive Company and Steal $25 Million
We’ve seen how deepfakes have spread across the internet impersonating some of the most popular people for a nefarious agenda and sometimes even to fool unsuspecting people. But what if we told you that scammers in Hong Kong were able to fake a video meeting using deepfake technology and steal a whopping $25.6 million in the process?
According to a report by the South China Morning Post, the same thing happened to a company based in Hong Kong, where fraudsters used fast-developing deepfake technology to spoof the company’s local branch during a fake and manipulated video conference call. Fraudsters have reportedly digitally falsified the appearance of the company’s CFO in order to issue orders for money transfers.
Everyone involved in the video calls, except for the victim, were fake real people, the publication said.
“Fraudsters used deepfake technology to transform publicly available video and other material into convincing versions of meeting participants,” the report states.
According to the Hong Kong police, this is the first scam in Hong Kong. “This time, in a multi-person video conference, it turns out that everything you see is fake,” Baron Chan Shun-ching, acting senior superintendent, said.
The officer added: “They used deepfake technology to imitate their target’s voice from the script.” A total of 15 transfers worth HK$25.6 million were made to various bank accounts in Hong Kong.
Notably, this follows several cases of celebrity deepfakes that have taken the internet by storm. The first incident happened with Indian actress Rashmika Mandanna last year, when her face was forced into a video by an online influencer. Recently, fake sexual clips of the singer Taylor Swift have also become common on the Internet.
