A Hong Kong criminal ring that scammed victims out of hundreds of millions of dollars by using deepfake technology to create fake images of beautiful women has been arrested by police.
According to CNN, on Wednesday, around 20 scammers who used deepfake-generated faces to deceive men and swindle approximately $46 million in Singapore and Hong Kong have been arrested.
The arrested suspects were young individuals between the ages of 21 and 34, most of whom were highly educated. Many were reportedly recruited into the gang after graduating from local universities.
The criminal organization used a typical online romance scam technique. They contacted victims through social media and won their affection with photos of fake women created using deepfake technology. After building trust through conversations and forming a romantic relationship with the victims, they would mention marriage and persuade them to invest in a fake cryptocurrency trading platform.
The syndicate would show victims fabricated profit records to reassure them. When the victims tried to withdraw their money and could not do so, they realized they had been scammed.
During this process, some victims requested video calls, but they failed to detect the advanced deepfake technology used by the scammers.
Police reported that the victims were men from Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, India, and Singapore.
The criminal organization has been active since October last year and reportedly earns around 100,000 HKD (US$12,800) per person per month in criminal proceeds.
Meanwhile, as deepfake technology advances, identity verification will become increasingly difficult. Global IT consulting firm Gartner predicted that by 2026, 30% of companies will be unable to rely solely on identity verification and facial biometric authentication solutions due to AI deepfakes. This means multiple solutions will need to be used together to reduce risks.
Akif Khan, VP Analyst at Gartner, warned that deepfakes can be exploited by malicious actors to weaken or make biometric authentication inefficient. He added that organizations will start to question the reliability of identity verification and authentication solutions as they cannot distinguish whether a person’s face is real or a deepfake.
