Scammers defrauded a multinational company of some $26 million by using deepfake technology to pose as senior company executives, Hong Kong police said on Sunday, in one of the first such cases in the city.
A deepfake is a video or audio recording made or modified using artificial intelligence.
It has the potential for misinformation and misuse, such as deepfake images showing people saying things they never said.
An employee at a company in a Chinese financial center received
"video conference calls from someone posing as a senior executive at his company asking him to transfer money to designated bank accounts
," it said. the police to the AFP.
All participants in the videoconference were
“fake”
Police received a report of the incident on January 29, by which time some HK$200 million (US$26 million) had already been lost via 15 transfers.
“Investigations are still ongoing and no arrests have been made so far
,” police said, without disclosing the name of the company.
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A senior police official, Baron Chan, said the video conference involved several participants, but that all except the victim were
"fake"
.
“The scammers found publicly available videos and audios via YouTube, then used deepfake technology to imitate their voices... to trick the victim into following their instructions
,” Chan told reporters.
The deepfake videos were pre-recorded and did not involve any dialogue or interaction with the victim, he added.