CNN — (CNN) — Hong Kong police say a financial executive at a multinational company was scammed out of $25 million by scammers who used deepfake technology to pose as the company's chief financial officer on a video conference call. .
In the elaborate scam, an employee was tricked into joining a video call with several other staff members, all of whom were actually deepfake recreations, Hong Kong police said in a press conference on Friday. mentioned in.
“()In a video conference with multiple people, everyone can [he saw] It was a fake,” senior superintendent Baron Zhang Xunqing told the city's public broadcaster RTHK.
Chan said the employee became suspicious after receiving a message purportedly from the UK-based company's chief financial officer. Employees initially suspected this was a phishing email because he talked about the need to carry out secret transactions.
But after the video call, the employee put aside his initial doubts because the others in attendance looked and sounded similar to colleagues he recognized, Chan said. said.
The worker, who believed everyone else on the phone to be genuine, agreed to transfer a total of HK$200 million (about $25.6 million), the police officer added.
The incident is one of several recent incidents in which fraudsters are believed to have used deepfake technology to alter public videos and other footage to defraud people of money.
At a press conference on Friday, Hong Kong police announced that six people had been arrested in connection with these scams.
Mr Chan said the eight stolen Hong Kong identity cards, all of which were reported lost by their owners, were used in 90 loan applications and 54 bank account registrations between July and September last year. said that it was done.
Police say AI deepfakes have been used at least 20 times to fool facial recognition programs by imitating people on ID cards.
The fraud involving a fake CFO was only discovered later when an employee checked with corporate headquarters.
Hong Kong police have not released the name of the company or the names or details of the employees.
Authorities around the world are growing concerned about the increasing sophistication of deepfake technology and the nefarious uses it may be used for.
In late January, AI-generated pornographic images of American pop star Taylor Swift circulated on social media, highlighting the harmful potential of artificial intelligence technology.
The photos, which showed the singer in sexually suggestive and explicit positions, were viewed tens of millions of times before being removed from social platforms.
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