Tricked by fake video conference, an employee transfers $26 million to scammers

Scammers defrauded a multinational company of nearly $26 million by using deepfake technology to pose as senior company executives, Hong Kong police said Sunday, in one of the first such cases in the city. A deepfake is a video or audio recording created or modified using artificial intelligence. It is prone to misinformation and abuse, such as deepfake images that show people saying things they never meant.

Received by an employee of a company in a Chinese financial center “Video conference calls from someone posing as a senior executive at his company asking him to transfer money to designated bank accounts”Police told AFP.

All participants were in the video conference “fake”

By the time police received a report of the incident on January 29, some HK$200 million (US$26 million) had already been lost through 15 transfers. “Investigations are still ongoing and no arrests have been made yet.”Police said without disclosing the name of the company.

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Baron Chan, a senior police officer, said several participants were involved in the video conference, but all but the victim. “fake”.

“Scammers found publicly available videos and audios via YouTube, then used deepfake technology to copy their voices… to trick the victim into following their instructions”, Chan told reporters. The deepfake videos were pre-recorded and did not involve any dialogue or interaction with the victim, he added.