fraud
Fraudsters have stolen 24 million euros by posing as the financial director of an international company. This happened via a video conference in which all participants were deepfakes.
When the employee of an international company received an email from his chief financial officer, who is based in the United Kingdom, he initially thought it might be a phishing attack. But he was then called into a video conference with the same CFO and also a number of colleagues he knew.
Previous meetings used
It all sounded very important and urgent. The employee did as he was asked: he made 15 deposits for a total of 200 million Hong Kong dollars, or 24 million euros. It wasn’t until a few days later that he started to feel something and contacted the head office.
Hong Kong police broke the story on Sunday, without naming the company or the people involved. The report is on the website of RTHK, a government broadcaster in Hong Kong.
According to police, the deepfake colleagues were created based on previous, real video meetings at the company. The audio was also spoofed.
“We want to warn the public about these new scam techniques,” police chief Baron Chan told RTHK.
