Deepfake scam: Company loses over Rs 200 crore after fake video call from ‘CFO’

A deepfake video robbed a company of over $25.6 million (more than Rs 200 crore) where the imposter portrayed himself as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company, reported the South China Morning Post. The imposter ordered a money transfer during a conference call. The employees were fooled into believing that the person on the conference call was real, whereas in reality, he created an avatar of the CFO and others in the company. As per the employees, not only did they look real, but they sounded real as well.

As per the report, “The scammers applied deepfake technology to turn publicly available video and other footage into convincing versions of the meeting’s participants”. As per the Hong Kong Police, this is the first case where the scammers used deepfake technology to deceive a financial agency. “This time, in a multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone you see is fake,” stated acting senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching.

He added, “They used deepfake technology to imitate the voice of their targets reading from a script”.

Notably, the employees that attended this conference call were instructed to make 15 transfers totalling HK$200 million or $25.5 million to five different Hong Kong Bank accounts.

Recently, deepfake images of American singer Taylor Swift were circulated on the internet. The vulgar images of the singer were posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. The Elon Musk-run microblogging platform had to ban all the searches related to “Taylor Swift” to limit the circulation of such explicit images.

Many popular names in India have also been a victim of deepfake technology, including Akshay Kumar, Alia Bhatt, Ratan Tata, even PM Narendra Modi. In a stern message to social media platforms, the government has underscored the importance of promptly identifying and removing misinformation, including deepfakes, or face legal repercussions.

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar recently emphasised the legal obligations imposed on intermediaries by the IT Rules, 2021, which mandate the swift removal of prohibited misinformation, false information, and deepfakes. Failure to comply with these rules strips intermediaries of their legal protection and exposes them to potential prosecution under relevant laws, including the Indian Penal Code.

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