A multinational company lost $25 million after its employee was tricked by Deepfake technology. Scammers impersonated the employee’s bosses with Deepfake!
Hong Kong police reported that a company lost $25 million after an employee was duped by deepfake versions of his coworkers. It was learned that the employee in question participated in a video call with the firm’s UK-based CFO and deepfakes of other colleagues.
25 million dollars in profits with Deepfake
Fraudsters used deepfake technology to defraud an employee at the Hong Kong branch of a multinational company out of nearly $25 million after tricking him, the China-based South China Morning Post reported, citing police. In January, an employee in the company’s finance department received a message from someone claiming to be the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. The employee then had a video call with the company’s CFO and other company employees. However, the people he spoke to were not his boss or employees, they were all deepfakes.
Based on the instructions received during this call, the employee reportedly transferred approximately $25.6 million to various Hong Kong bank accounts. A week after the scam, the employee contacted the company’s headquarters and realized something had gone wrong. The company and the employee were not named, but the fraudsters created deepfakes of meeting attendees based on publicly available (social media, traditional media, etc.) video and audio footage.
Deepfake risk is increasing every day
As we have seen in recent days, weeks and months, deepfake videos are causing global concern. The latest example of this was last week on the popular social media platform X. The victim of this incident was Taylor Swift. Swift’s pornographic images started to be shared on X and quickly went viral. X then blocked the search for “Taylor Swift” on the platform.
