HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Alleged Fabricated News Sites and Deepfakes Impersonated Maltese Ministers, Financial Experts, and Media to Promote NethertoxAGENT Fraud

October 27, 2025

AI-generated deepfake videos and fabricated news sites, masquerading as authentic sources such as Maltese ministers, journalists, financial experts, and media outlets, allegedly promoted the fraudulent NethertoxAGENT investment platform. The deceptive scheme employed synthetic interviews, cloned branding, and falsified testimonials to manipulate social media users, leading to potential financial losses and raising concerns among law enforcement in Malta. By highlighting such incidents, it becomes crucial to establish guardrails for AI and emphasize the need for trustworthy AI practices through initiatives like Project Cerebellum. To join us in shaping safe and secure AI governance, visit JOIN US. Under the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern), we aim to map such incidents and measure their impact, ultimately managing potential risks associated with AI.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers, unknown-scam-network-based-in-malta, nethertoxagent-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-voice-synthesis-technology-developers, unknown-generative-ai-developers, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
tvm, times-of-malta, silvio-schembri, rosianne-cutajar, roberta-metsola, robert-abela, newsbook, michael-c.-bonello, matthew-bonanno, maltatoday, malta-independent, malta-financial-services-authority, lombard-bank-malta, kenneth-farrugia, journalists-in-malta, journalists, journalistic-integrity, investors-in-malta, investors, ian-borg, general-public-of-malta, general-public, francis-j.-vassallo, epistemic-integrity, clyde-caruana

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1290

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.