A multinational corporation in Hong Kong was duped, after a deepfake video conference call where a CFO’s avatar ordered transfers to five bank accounts. Scammers stole $25.6 million by imitating targets’ voices with deepfake technology.
In the first deepfake video conference call, a digitally recreated CFO requested money transfers, costing a multinational corporation USD 25.6 million. The scammers used Deepfake to construct digitally altered copies of the company’s CFO and others in a video conversation where “everyone looked real” to dupe Hong Kong colleagues.
All video callers except the victim were fakes. It says, “The scammers applied deepfake technology to turn publicly available video and other footage into convincing versions of the meeting’s participants.”
Police believe this is the first incident of deepfakes deceiving financial institutions.
“This time, in a multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone you see is fake,” acting senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching said.
The targeted employee recognized the callers as actual persons.
They conducted 15 payments totaling HK$200 million and $25.6 million to five Hong Kong bank accounts per meeting directions.
Chan stated, “They employed deepfake technology to simulate their targets reading from a script.”
Recent viral photographs of Taylor Swift were deepfake. After the proliferation of graphic, digitally altered photographs of Swift, Elon Musk’s X barred her name searches for several days.
Conclusion
A deepfake video conference call tricked a Hong Kong multinational corporation into money transfers. Scammers utilized Deepfake to construct fake CEOs and other workers that looked legitimate. Employees sent 15 HK$200 million and $25.6 million to five Hong Kong bank accounts as instructed. This is the first documented deepfake financial agency scam.
