Purported AI-Generated Inland Revenue Scam Ads Reportedly Impersonated New Zealand Commissioner Peter Mersi in Alleged Fake Crypto Tax Webinar

March 5, 2026

New Zealand Inland Revenue issued a warning about a scam utilizing a suspected AI-generated image of Commissioner Peter Mersi, allegedly using fake Inland Revenue branding and misleading social media ads to promote an alleged fake webinar on crypto tax changes. The campaign aimed at tricking individuals into disclosing sensitive information.

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GOVERN 2.2 — similarity 0.603, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
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MAP 4.2 — similarity 0.597, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: unknown-scammers, unknown-advertisers
Alleged developer: unknown-image-generator-developers, unknown-generative-ai-developers, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties: social-media-users-in-new-zealand, peter-mersi, new-zealand-taxpayers, new-zealand-inland-revenue, general-public-of-new-zealand, general-public, epistemic-integrity

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1413

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.

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