Purportedly AI-Assisted Impersonation of Martin Henderson in Romance Scam Leads to Reported NZ$375,000 Fraud
An alleged online romance scam exploiting AI-assisted impersonation defrauded a woman, "Lea," of NZ$375,000 over two years. The scammer allegedly used AI-generated voice messages and deceptive text communication to pose as New Zealand actor Martin Henderson and is reported to have built up a relationship beginning in early 2023. The victim, believing the scam was real, reportedly relocated to New Zealand in December 2024, only discovering the fraud in February 2025.
- Date it happened
- 2025-02-01
- Organisation involved
- Unknown scammer impersonating Martin Henderson, Scammers
- Product, system or model
- Large language models, Deepfake technology, Synthetic audio generation technology
This incident was imported from AI Incident Database and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.