News, 02/08/2024, 1:30 PM
The branch of a multinational company in Hong Kong suffered major financial losses due to fraud, when an employee fulfilled a request he received via video call from a hologram of the company’s CFO, and paid the fraudsters 200 million Hong Kong dollars.
The scam is reminiscent of an incident in August 2022 when fraudsters created a fake hologram of Patrick Hillman, Binance’s director of communications, using videos of his television appearances to trick customers.
In the latest case, an employee of a company in Hong Kong was duped out of paying HK$200 million (approximately US$25.6 million) after participating in a fake video call thinking he was talking to the company’s CFO. Several other employees also attended the call. However, it was all a deepfake.
The worker was initially suspicious when he received a message from the CFO of the UK-based branch of the company, thinking it was a phishing email. However, after the video call, since everyone present in the call resembled his colleagues, despite his initial doubts, he fell into the trap of fraudsters.
What happened was that the fraudsters used publicly available footage to create convincing versions of the meeting participants, Hong Kong police said.
In the digitally altered video, the CFO issued instructions to transfer funds to the fraudsters’ accounts. Fooled by the impeccably replicated appearance and voice of the CFO, the employee followed the instructions, leading to a significant financial loss. He transferred $25 million to five bank accounts in 15 transactions. The fraud was discovered after an employee shared the information with the company’s headquarters. All this happened in a week.
This is not the first incident of its kind involving deepfake technology. Fraudsters are increasingly relying on this technology to scam people out of money.
Bitdefender’s latest research has shown an increase in YouTube stream-jacking campaigns that use dipfakes to steal cryptocurrencies.
Authorities are investigating the incident in Hong Kong, which is the first such scam in which such a sum of money has been lost.
Security experts are concerned about the increasing sophistication of fraudsters and their potential for financial fraud, which is why they are calling for employee training to recognize fraud in time.
Hong Kong police also said that on at least 20 occasions, eight stolen ID cards were used to make 90 loan applications and open 54 bank accounts between July and September 2023, using deepfake technology to defraud facial recognition programs. Authorities have so far arrested six people in connection with these scams.
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