Description: A recently divorced Bitcoin investor reportedly lost his entire retirement fund, one full Bitcoin, after being deceived by a purportedly AI-enabled romance scam. The perpetrator allegedly used AI-generated portraits and real-time deepfake video calls to pose as a romantic partner and trusted crypto trader, persuading the victim to transfer cryptocurrency through a "pig-butchering" scheme that displayed fake profits and made recovery impossible.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developers and Unknown voice cloning technology developers developed an AI system deployed by Unknown scammers and Unknown pig-butchering scammers, which harmed Investors , Cryptocurrency investors , Cryptocurrency investors defrauded by AI-generated profiles and Pig-butchering scam victims.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake technology and Unknown voice cloning technology
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1327
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-12-31
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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Key takeaways
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A recently divorced Bitcoin investor lost his entire retirement fund, one full Bitcoin, to an AI-powered romance scam orchestrated by a sophisticated criminal using deepfakes.
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Pig butchering scams are relationship-based fr…
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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