New Zealand Financial Markets Authority (FMA), Te Mana Tātai Hokohoko, Reportedly Flags Purported Deepfake Pump-and-Dump Network Using Social Media Ads
The New Zealand Financial Markets Authority (FMA), Te Mana Tātai Hokohoko, reportedly warned of a global AI-enabled "pump-and-dump" scam that used purported deepfake videos of prominent New Zealand business leaders in Facebook and Instagram ads to lure investors into fake WhatsApp investment groups. Victims were allegedly urged to buy low-value foreign shares to inflate prices, then defrauded through a follow-on "recovery" scam.
- Date it happened
- 2025-08-19
- Organisation involved
- Unknown scammers impersonating New Zealand business leaders, Scammers
- Product, system or model
- WhatsApp, Trading platforms, Social media, Instagram, Facebook, 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.