Deepfake interviews are new, but you can lose millions to these scams: Here’s the story

We’ve seen how deepfakes have spread across the internet, imitating the most popular people around for nefarious purposes, and sometimes even for the purpose of fooling unsuspecting people. . But what if we told you that a Hong Kong fraudster used deepfake technology to fake a video conference, and in the process he was able to steal a whopping $25.6 million?

A similar thing happened with a Hong Kong-based company, where scammers used rapidly advancing deepfake technology to steal information from the company during a fake and manipulated video conference, as reported by the South China Morning Post. It is said that he deceived the local branch of the company. The fraudsters reportedly digitally forged the appearance of the company’s chief financial officer and ordered the money to be transferred.

The newspaper said everyone on the video call, except for the victim, was a fake impersonator of the real person.

“Fraudsters applied deepfake technology to transform publicly available videos and other footage into versions that persuaded meeting participants,” the report said.

According to Hong Kong police, this is the first fraud case in Hong Kong. Deputy Senior Superintendent Baron Chan Xun-ching said, “This time it was a multi-person video conference, and it turned out that everyone on the video was a fake.”

“They used deepfake technology to imitate the target’s voice reading out the script,” the officer added. A total of 15 transfers were made, with 25.6 million transferred to multiple bank accounts in Hong Kong. The equivalent of Hong Kong dollars was remitted.

Notably, this follows the celebrity deepfake scandal that has taken the internet by storm. The first incident occurred last year with Indian actress Rashmika Mandana, whose face was embedded in an online influencer’s video. Recently, a sexually explicit fake clip of singer Taylor Swift also went viral on the internet.