In a chilling example of how deepfake technology can be weaponized for financial crime, a company was duped out of a staggering Rs 200 crore (approximately $25.6 million) after scammers impersonated its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) during a video conference call.
The imposter, leveraging sophisticated deepfake technology, created realistic avatars of the CFO and other participants, fooling employees into believing they were interacting with real people. The report describes how the scammers “applied deepfake technology to turn publicly available video and other footage into convincing versions of the meeting’s participants,” not only replicating their appearance but also their voices.
Acting on the imposter’s instructions, employees authorized a series of 15 transfers totaling HK$200 million (approximately $25.5 million) to five different Hong Kong bank accounts. This incident marks the first time Hong Kong Police have encountered deepfakes used in financial fraud, highlighting the evolving nature of cybercrime.
“This time, in a multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone you see is fake,” stated acting senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching, emphasizing the sophistication of the scam. He further elaborated that “They used deepfake technology to imitate the voice of their targets reading from a script.”
The incident serves as a stark reminder of the potential dangers posed by deepfakes, which have also targeted celebrities like Taylor Swift and Indian personalities like Akshay Kumar, Alia Bhatt, and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Indian government has issued stern warnings to social media platforms, emphasizing their legal obligation to promptly remove deepfakes and other forms of misinformation under the IT Rules, 2021.
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