Description: Hong Kong police arrested 31 people linked to a deepfake scam syndicate that allegedly defrauded victims in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. The group used AI-generated images to impersonate wealthy women, training recruits to discuss luxury lifestyles, finance, and cryptocurrency to gain trust. Scammers reportedly persuaded victims to invest in fraudulent schemes, with police intercepting HK$34 million in illicit proceeds.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developers and Unknown AI-generated image creators developed an AI system deployed by Hong Kong-based deepfake scam syndicate, which harmed Victims of romance scams in Taiwan , Victims of romance scams in Singapore , Victims of romance scams in Malaysia , Cryptocurrency investors defrauded by AI-generated profiles and Hong Kong financial regulators investigating fraud.
Alleged implicated AI systems: AI-generated deepfake image platforms , AI-driven text and chatbot manipulation tools , Social media platforms used for fraud and Cryptocurrency trading platforms
Incident Stats
Incident ID
921
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-01-05
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
scmp.com · 2025
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
Learning Japanese, playing golf and tasting red wine worth more than HK$100,000 (US$12,850) a bottle were among the topics of conversation prompts a scam syndicate taught recruits to help pass as rich, single women, Hong Kong police have re…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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