Hong Kong: Finance worker tricked with 'deepfake' ends up paying USD 25 million to fraudsters

Hong Kong, February 4 : A finance worker at a multinational firm in Hong Kong was tricked into paying out USD 25 million to fraudsters who used deepfake technology to pose as the company's chief financial officer, CNN reported, citing 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 purportedly from the company's UK-based CFO. 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 his colleagues, Chan said.
The police officer further said that the worker believed that everyone else on the call was real and agreed to remit a total of 200 million Hong Kong dollars (around USD 25.6 million), CNN reported.
The case is one of several recent episodes in which fraudsters have used deepfake technology to modify publicly available video and other footage to cheat people for money.
Hong Kong police said they had made six arrests in connection with such scams.
Chan said that eight stolen Hong Kong identity cards - all of which had been reported as lost by their owners - were used to make 90 loan applications and 54 bank account registrations between July and September last year.
According to the police, AI deepfakes had been used to trick facial recognition programs by imitating the people pictured on the identity cards, on at least 20 occasions, CNN reported.
The scam involving the fake CFO was only discovered when the employee later checked with the corporation's head office.
Hong Kong police did not reveal the name or details of the company or the worker.
Meanwhile, authorities across the world are growing increasingly concerned at the sophistication of deepfake technology and the nefarious uses it can be put to.
In January, AI-generated pornographic images of the American pop star Taylor Swift spread across social media, underscoring the damaging potential posed by artificial intelligence technology, as reported by CNN.
The photos - which show the singer in sexually suggestive and explicit positions - were viewed tens of millions of times before being removed from social media platforms.