Hong Kong police said a finance worker at an unnamed multinational corporation was duped into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company's CFO, CNN reported Feb. 4.
The worker attended a video meeting with what he thought were several other members of the company's staff, but were actually deepfake recreations, in which AI is used to replace one person's likeness with another, according to the report.
The worker was initially suspicious after receiving a message purportedly from the company's U.K.-based CFO asking about the need for a secret transaction to be carried out, according to the report. Those concerns were put aside after the video call because the other people in attendance looked and sounded like colleagues he recognized. The worker agreed to remit the equivalent of about $25.6 million.
The scam was discovered after the employee later checked with the company's head office, according to the report.