Posted on 03/17/2025 11:13:29 AM PDT by algore
A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police.
The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were several other members of staff, but all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations, Hong Kong police said at a briefing on Friday.
“(In the) multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone [he saw] was fake,” senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching told the city’s public broadcaster RTHK.
Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out.
However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said.
Believing everyone else on the call was real, the worker agreed to remit a total of $200 million Hong Kong dollars – about $25.6 million, the police officer added.
The case is one of several recent episodes in which fraudsters are believed to have used deepfake technology to modify publicly available video and other footage to cheat people out of money.
The scam involving the fake CFO was only discovered when the employee later checked with the corporation’s head office.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
There goes Zoom.
(Yay!)
Thanks for posting—crazy times we have here.
Yep. Every month I see it getting more convincing. Look at this one I saw yesterday with Trump and Zelinsky, this is unreal.......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPUeN2LewUM&ab_channel=ordanburdan
Someone tried this on a finance person at my company last year. Fortunately, the intended target figured out it was a scam after being asked to switch the conversation to WhatsApp, but the interaction went on for a surprising amount of time before that request was made.
That’s a lot of fun, but I don’t think anyone would take it for ‘real’.
its about security and internal controls.
Everyone hates bureaucracy, people get lazy with repetitive tasks, and humans always look for short-cuts in their daily tasks, but $25 million payment authorization in the hands of one person is simply wrong
A local car large dealership in our area was the victim of $4 million in theft, over about 10 years - perpetrated by their own accountant. She both seemingly approved invoices, and wrote and approved checks, which is a big NO-NO.
She was a very long-term, trusted employee, which obviously aided the fraud.
The family that owned the dealership divided up job functions among family members, which probably also contributed to the problem - everyone was in their own silo.
A new outside accounting auditor instituted a 2 week mandatory vacation period for department heads while their departments were being audited. That’s how her scheme was finally found-out.
I wish someone would do this to Soros’ CFO, Planned Parenthood’s CFO, ACLU, etc...
Here in Arizona, the Director of Housing send $2m to Nigeria. It was a Nigerian scam and our Democrat Governor did not believe that was enough to fire her. The GOP Legislature took care of it. She’s gone.
Um…
This was February 2024.
Ugh. Baby Zoom, just as bad!
The point is that these baby steps to realism will lead to undetectable.
I'd bet that within 20 years they will be able to "skin" a robot to be anyone, with A.I. voice and mannerisms.
We need to get a handle on it PDQ.
Is this another one?
Or the one that happened a little while ago?
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