Deepfake romance scam raked in $46 million from men across Asia, police say

Hong Kong CNN —

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.

“Pig-butchering” scams – named for the “fattening up” of victims before taking everything they have – are a multibillion-dollar illicit industry in which the con artists take on false online identities and spend months grooming their targets to get them to invest on bogus crypto sites. Deepfakes are one more weapon in their arsenal to try and convince