Hong Kong: Deepfake scam cost company $26 million

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: ANNETTE RIEDL / DPA / DPA PICTURE-ALLIANCE VIA AFP 9:28 p.m., February 4, 2024, modified at 9:31 p.m., February 4, 2024

Scammers swindled some $26 million from a multinational corporation using deepfake technology to pose as senior company executives, Hong Kong police said 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.

26 million US dollars lost

An employee of a company in a Chinese financial center received "video conference calls from someone posing as a senior manager of his company asking him to transfer money to designated bank accounts", the court said. police at the AFP. 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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The victim worked in the finance department and the scammers posed as the company's UK-based finance director, according to Hong Kong media. A senior police official, Baron Chan, said the video conference involved several participants, but all of them 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.