HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

Hong Kong Authorities Seize HK$34M in Alleged Deepfake Scam Targeting Victims in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia

January 5, 2025

Hong Kong police arrested 31 people linked to a deepfake scam syndicate that allegedly defrauded victims in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. The group used AI-generated images to impersonate wealthy women, training recruits to discuss luxury lifestyles, finance, and cryptocurrency to gain trust. Scammers reportedly persuaded victims to invest in fraudulent schemes, with police intercepting HK$34 million in illicit proceeds.
Alleged deployer
hong-kong-based-deepfake-scam-syndicate
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-ai-generated-image-creators
Alleged harmed parties
victims-of-romance-scams-in-taiwan, victims-of-romance-scams-in-singapore, victims-of-romance-scams-in-malaysia, hong-kong-financial-regulators-investigating-fraud, cryptocurrency-investors-defrauded-by-ai-generated-profiles

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/921

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.