 "How deepfake romance scammers stole $46 million from men in India, China, Singapore")
Police in Hong Kong have busted a deepfake scam that swindled $46 million from unsuspecting men.
The police have arrested 27 people including college graduates and suspected triad members for using deepfake technology to trap victims in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore and India in a love scam.
Deepfakes are manipulated media in which a person’s likeness – either in an image or a video – is replaced with someone else.
They are created via Artificial Intelligence using deep learning algorithms.
But what happened? How did police crack the operation?
Let’s take a closer look:
What happened?
As per SCMP, the ring set up its base in a 4,000 square feet industrial unit in Hong Kong’s Hung Hom in October 2023.
The ring then began expanding its ranks with recruits.
At least 21 men and six women were brought into the scheme – most of them well educated and having graduated in digital media and technology.
SCMP quoted senior superintendent Fang Chi-kin, who heads the New Territories South regional crime unit, as saying that the recruits helped set up the romance scam.
The suspects then used deepfake technology to swap out their own faces with photos of attractive women.
CNN reported that the scam usually began with a text from the scammer – claiming that they had messaged the wrong number.
The scammers then began building a relationship with the victims.
The operation was highly organised with separate divisions responsible for carrying out different parts of the con.
The suspects were even issued a manual which instructed them how to use “the victim’s sincerity and emotion” to their advantage.
The manual directed the suspects to find out about the victim’s worldview, create an identity to appeal to them, feign about relationships gone wrong or businesses gone broke to “deepen the other person’s trust” and offer them a “beautiful vision” including making travel plans.
“The syndicate’s operation began with online romance,” Fang explained to SCMP. “Following initial contact with victims on social media platforms, they first sent artificially generated photos using AI technology to create attractive individuals in terms of appearance, personality, occupation, education and other aspects.”
“Despite engaging in video calls, the victims continued to believe they were building a romantic relationship with supposedly superior women,” he added.
All this to lure the victims, mostly men, into investing on a crypto platform.
This is a typical example of a “pig butchering” scam – which involves a fraudster posing as a friend or romantic interest to dupe people into providing funds for bogus investments, job opportunities, and other schemes, only to flee with the money.
“The syndicate presented fabricated profit transaction records to victims, claiming substantial returns on their investments,” Fang said.
“They even discussed future plans with the victims, creating a false sense of happiness to encourage them to continue investing for a shared future,” Fang added.
The victims only realised they were conned when they found themselves unable to withdraw their ‘profits.’
As per CNN, the operation ran for around a year before police caught wind of it in August.
The police recovered over 100 cell phones, $26,000 in cash and a number of luxury watches from the raid.
Crypto.News quoted the police as saying that the investigation is ongoing and that future arrests may be made.
The website quoted a study from the University of Texas as showing that that victims had lost $75 billion in romance scams from January 2020 to February 2024.
Many of the operations were run out of Southeast Asia.
With inputs from agencies
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