Fraudulent Use of AI-Cloned Voice: A $35 Million Scheme - Highlighting the Need for Safe and Secure AI
January 15, 2020
In January 2020, a Hong Kong bank manager, under false pretenses, authorized a $35 million fund transfer following a call from an individual whose voice was cloned using AI. This incident allegedly involved at least 17 individuals, leading to global fund transfers that triggered an Emirati and subsequent U.S. investigation. This AI incident maps to the Govern function in HISPI Project Cerebellum Trusted AI Model (TAIM). JOIN US: Join us in fostering responsible AI governance and harm prevention.
- Alleged deployer
- unknown-transnational-fraud-ring, unknown-scammers, unknown-cybercriminals
- Alleged developer
- unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
- Alleged harmed parties
- unnamed-japanese-firm, unnamed-hong-kong-based-branch-manager-of-unnamed-japanese-firm, general-public-of-the-united-arab-emirates, centennial-bank
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/147
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.