Associated Incidents
A woman has told a court how she lost her life savings after investing over €53,000 when she came across deepfake videos featuring prime minister Robert Abela on Facebook.
The woman took the witness stand on Monday afternoon in criminal proceedings against Kateryna Izotkina, a Ukrainian national, who stands accused of money laundering, obtaining money by false pretences, making fraudulent gains and involvement in organised crime. She denies the charges.
The alleged victim told the court she came across a video in which Abela was purportedly promoting a scheme inviting people to invest in trading on July 22.
Two days later, she saw other similar videos featuring former Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, former prime minister Joseph Muscat, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was promoting the scheme for all European citizens as a way of making a good investment.
The unsuspecting victim clicked the link and entered her mobile number.
A few seconds later, she got a call and was encouraged to invest €250. During the call, she was asked for a lot of details, including her bank cards and bank account numbers.
The person at the other end spoke English, and the call originated from a number bearing "+44" prefix.
The woman tried to transfer €250 from her BNF account, but the transaction did not go through. She then tried using her HSBC account, and the transaction was completed.
All of this was done over the phone, with the caller trying to calm the alleged victim when the first transaction did not go through.
She was then told that a financial advisor would contact her.
On July 28, a woman claiming to be "Maria Lipinski" called the alleged victim, introducing herself as the financial advisor. Lipinski would call the witness on a daily basis.
"She asked me to install Telegram on my phone and contacted me mainly there. She also wanted me to install AnyDesk on my laptop so that she could access my laptop any time she wanted," the witness recalled, adding that she was told it would facilitate trading in cryptocurrency.
AnyDesk is a remote desktop application providing platform-independent remote access to personal computers and other devices running the host application. Through the application, one gains remote control, file transfer, and VPN functionality.
"I had no idea what was going on," the witness said, adding that soon she started trading on "Wealth Xpert" - a trading platform. Levinksy allegedly told the victim that she was using her money to trade in gold, not in bitcoin, since the former was more secure.
"I could see the graphs and that I was making a profit," the witness said, adding that according to what she saw, she was making €30 profit a day.
The woman then questioned why she was not making more profit, since the deepfake videos had claimed one would make a €1,000 profit every week. She was asked to invest €50,000.
The alleged victim agreed to €25,000 and told Lipinski that she could only deal with cash, since she kept all her money at home. Lipinski told her they would only send a courier for anything over €50,000, but eventually agreed to the €25,000.
The witness was given a time and date. She was to meet the courier at the Żurrieq Square.
Lipinski told the woman not to talk to the courier and not to meet her near her home "for everyone to be safe". On the day the alleged victim and the courier met, the former gave her the money in a brown envelope, but she was not given a receipt.
The money was allegedly placed in her crypto wallet, and the profit went up as they started trading. The woman explained that she never saw her money again.
Lipinski then told her they would buy bitcoin from a certain Pablo from Argentina, and then sell it. The man allegedly deposited €40,000 in her wallet.
"The profit really went up in one day. When we came for the withdrawal of funds, I was told that all funds were frozen, and we could not trade," the witness recalled.
She was told that "the financial insurance" caught on a lot of funds, and was asked to fork out an additional €30,000. The witness said that she could only give €16,000. Lipinski suggested using €10,000 that was left by a client, and she allegedly managed to raise an extra €4,000 from trading. The money was collected from the alleged victim by another courier.
The alleged victim was informed that the funds could not be released because of the €10,000 that did not originate from her wallet.
'€10k within 48 hours or lose everything'
Lipinski then allegedly told her that she needs to get €10,000 within 48 hours or else she would lose everything.
She got the €10,000 but was informed that a courier could only be sent for €15,000. She managed to withdraw additional cash and raised €12,000. A Polish woman then came to pick the money up from the square, the witness recalled.
The money was accepted, and the alleged victim was informed that she would get a 95% refund on the sum paid, which then started showing on her trading account.
A woman claiming to be from Euroclear Belgian Intermediary Bank then called the witness and threatened that if she does not pay €20,000 within five days, she would be sued for money laundering.
It was at this point that the woman went to her daughter.
ChatGPT-generated text
Her daughter, upon seeing the messages and emails, immediately recognised the text as being ChatGPT-generated.
"Ma, that's ChatGPT," the witness recalled her daughter telling her, adding that it was a scam.
The pair filed a police report, and from then on, the Financial Crimes Investigation Department started working on the case.
The police suggested that the alleged victim remain in touch with the scammers, since this was the first time they had a victim dealing in cash.
"You'd think we were great friends," the witness said when speaking about her relationship with Lipinski, who allegedly had confided in her that she wanted to leave the company she was working for and would take her on as a client once she moved to a new company.
After realising that she had been scammed, the woman could not speak to Lipinski in the same way she used to.
Before the accused picked up the last tranche of money, the FCID got approval for a controlled delivery and gave the witness €10,000 in counterfeit notes. She placed them in a brown envelope, wrote the amount, and placed them in a brown bag.
"I had never seen the accused before," the witness told the court, adding: "I paid a total of €53,250 -- practically all my life savings".
The woman got a call an hour before the scheduled meeting with the courier, informing her she was unwell. The meeting was rescheduled for the following day. Eventually, when she turned up, the police were also at the scene and Izotkina was arrested after she was given the money by the witness.
'You will be sorry'
Once Izotkina was arrested, the alleged victim received a call purportedly originating from the police, and Lipinski allegedly threatened her, saying: "You will be sorry for what you have done. We will get her [the accused] out in no time. We are not scammers".
Under cross-examination, the woman confirmed that she had spoken to "Maria Lipinski", but for all she knew, she could have another name.
She never spoke to the financial advisor over a video call but had a photo of Lipinski from the woman's supposedly Telegram account.
The woman underlined that she did not have an understanding of trading or finance, but Lipinski was the person who had to guide her.
The case continues later this month.
Magistrate Rachel Montebello presided. AG lawyer Marica Ciantar prosecuted, assisted by police inspector Andy Rotin. Lawyers Nicholai Bugeja and Alexander Boichuk appeared for the accused.