Deepfake Cryptocurrency Scam Allegedly Impersonates Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
December 12, 2024
A deepfake scam allegedly impersonating Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni circulated on various platforms. It reportedly promoted a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment scheme. The deepfakes claimed the scheme was state-backed, promising €40,000 in guaranteed income. Victims were urged to invest €250, only to lose access to funds. Italy’s Consob blocked the deceptive ads and websites, marking the first enforcement of new financial fraud regulations.
- Alleged deployer
- unknown-scammers-impersonating-sergio-mattarella-and-giorgia-meloni, unknown-scammers
- Alleged developer
- unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
- Alleged harmed parties
- sergio-mattarella, giorgia-meloni, general-public-of-italy
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/928
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.