A multinational company’s Hong Kong office was defrauded of HK$200 million (US$25.6 million) through a sophisticated deepfake scam, as reported by the South China Morning Post. In this unprecedented case, scammers utilized deepfake technology to mimic the company’s chief financial officer and other employees in a video conference, convincing an employee to make 15 fund transfers to five different bank accounts. This marks the first significant deepfake-related financial fraud in Hong Kong, highlighting the challenges posed by AI in creating realistic fake videos or audio recordings.
The scam came to light after a finance department employee received a suspicious email, purportedly from the company’s UK-based CFO, instructing a secret transaction. Despite initial doubts, the convincing deepfake video conference led the employee to comply. The fraudulent activity was discovered about a week later, prompting a police investigation, though no arrests have been made yet.
Hong Kong police are emphasizing the novelty of this scam, advising the public on ways to verify identities in video calls to prevent similar incidents. They also plan to enhance the alert system for the Faster Payment System (FPS) to include transactions linked to known scams.
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