Hong Kong Man Reportedly Lost More Than HK$10 Million in WhatsApp Scam Using Purported AI-Generated Voice Impersonation of His Father

July 29, 2026

A Hong Kong man reported losing more than HK$10 million after scammers impersonated his father's voice on WhatsApp, leading to repeated transfers until his savings were depleted. The incident highlights the risks of AI-generated voice scams and the importance of implementing robust security measures to prevent such incidents. Through contributors—JOIN US—to learn more about AI governance and harm prevention strategies.

Alleged deployer

voice-cloning-impersonation-scammers, synthetic-media-creators, scammers-in-hong-kong, scammers, deepfake-creators, cybercriminals

Alleged developer

voice-cloning-technology-developers, synthetic-media-generation-technology, synthetic-audio-generation-technology-developers, deepfake-technology-developers

Alleged harmed parties

whatsapp-users, victims-of-voice-cloning-impersonation-scams, victims-of-impersonation-scams, financial-scam-victims

AI governance case studies

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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.