SHE appeared to be a beautiful woman, and in the minds of men across Asia, the video calls they spoke on confirmed their newfound love was real.
But Hong Kong police say the men had fallen prey to a romance scam that used deepfake artificial intelligence to lure its victims into parting with more than $46 million.
In a news conference Monday, police in the Asian financial hub announced the arrests of more than two dozen members of the alleged scam ring, which they say targeted men from Taiwan to Singapore and as far away as India.
Police said the 21 men and six women were held on charges including conspiracy to defraud following a raid on the gang’s alleged operating center at a 4,000-square-foot industrial unit in the city’s Hung Hom district.
Aged 21 to 34, the suspects were mostly well-educated, with many of them digital media and technology graduates allegedly recruited by the gang after attending local universities, police said.
The suspects allegedly worked with IT specialists overseas to build a fake cryptocurrency platform, where the victims were coerced to make investments, police added.
Deepfakes are comprised of realistic fake video, audio, and other content created with the help of AI.
The technology is being increasingly adopted by a variety of bad actors, from people wishing to spread convincing disinformation to online scammers.
Among the steps: learning about the victim’s worldview to create a “tailor-made” persona; inventing difficulties such as failed relationships or businesses to “deepen the other person’s trust”; and finally, painting a “beautiful vision” including travel plans together to push the victim into investing.
The scam ran for about a year before police received intelligence about it around August, police said.
More than 100 cell phones, the equivalent of nearly $26,000 in cash and a number of luxury watches, were recovered in the raid, police said.
