Deepfake CFO scams finance worker for USD 25 million
Scammers tricked a Hong Kong-based employee of a British engineering company into paying out HKD 200 million (USD 26 million) with a fake group video call created using deepfake technology. A ccording to Hong Kong police, the worker received a strange message purportedly from his company’s UK-based chief financial officer asking for a secret transaction to be carried out. At tend ing a subsequent video call , the employee was reassured by several colleagues whom he thought he recognised. However, it transpired that all the 'people' on the call were in fact deepfake recreations of colleagues that had been manipulated using public video footage. The scam was discovered when the employee later checked with the company's head office. ➕ May 2024. Arup confirmed it was the target of the scam. Deepfake Deepfakes (a portmanteau of ' deep learning ' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media. Source: Wikipedia 🔗 System 🤖 Unknown Operator: Bank employee Developer: Country: Hong Kong Sector: Banking/financial services Purpose: Defraud Technology: Deepfake - audio, video; Machine learning Issue: Security ; Transparency
- Date it happened
- 2024-01-01
- Organisation involved
- Bank employee
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