Description: Authorities in Vietnam arrested three South Korean men alleged to have used purported deepfake identities in a cross-border romance scam scheme. Victims were reportedly deceived into travel and coerced into moving to Cambodia, where they reportedly were forced into performing scam operations after their passports were taken. The network allegedly obtained about USD $1 million in 2024 before the suspects fled Cambodia and were arrested in Da Nang on October 28, 2025.
Editor Notes: Timeline notes: Reported period of ongoing harm was 08/01/2024 through 12/31/2024 (alleged fraud and trafficking); (1) Cambodia operations allegedly ongoing through 2024; (2) Suspects reportedly fled Cambodia around 10/15/2025; (3) Arrest in Đà Nẵng in Vietnam on 10/28/2025; (1) News reports emerged in early December 2025. This incident ID was created on 12/06/2025.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developers and Unknown voice cloning technology developers developed an AI system deployed by Choi Minsu , Choi Jinwoo and Seo Jaeseok, which harmed General public , Victims of romance scams , Trafficking victims coerced into scam operations and Epistemic integrity.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake technology and Unknown voice cloning technology
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1291
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-08-01
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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ĐÀ NẴNG --- Police in central Việt Nam have arrested three nationals from the Republic of Korea who are accused of running a cross-border romance-scam network that used deepfake technology and allegedly trafficked victims into forced online…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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