Deepfake CFO scams Arup for USD 25 million
Occurred: January 2024
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Scammers tricked a Hong Kong-based employee of a British engineering company into paying out HKD 200 million (USD 26 million) with a fake group video call created using deepfake technology.
According to Hong Kong police, the worker received a strange message purportedly from his company’s UK-based chief financial officer asking for a secret transaction to be carried out.
Attending a subsequent video call, the employee was reassured by several colleagues whom he thought he recognised.
However, it transpired that all the 'people' on the call were in fact deepfake recreations of colleagues that had been manipulated using public video footage.
The scam was discovered when the employee later checked with the company's head office.
➕ May 2024. Arup confirmed it was the target of the scam.
Deepfake
Deepfakes (a portmanteau of 'deep learning' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media.
Source: Wikipedia 🔗
System 🤖
Unknown
Operator: Bank employee
Developer:
Country: Hong Kong
Sector: Banking/financial services
Purpose: Defraud
Technology: Deepfake - audio, video; Machine learning
Issue: Security; Transparency
News, commentary, analysis 🗞️
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-04/deepfake-video-call-scams-global-firm-out-of-26-million-scmp
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3250851/everyone-looked-real-multinational-firms-hong-kong-office-loses-hk200-million-after-scammers-stage
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/4/24061192/a-company-lost-25-6-million-because-of-a-deepfaked-conference-call
Page info
Type: Incident
Published: February 2024