Purported Deepfake Impersonating Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides Reportedly Defrauded Citizens of Thousands of Euros

December 6, 2025

In December 2025, a deepfake video reportedly created using AI technology impersonated President Nicos Christodoulides and other officials, promoting a fraudulent investment platform. Approximately 15 citizens lost between €10,000 and €15,000 each. This incident underscores the growing threat of malicious AI-based impersonation schemes and the urgent need for effective protection. The HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) aims to establish guardrails for safe and secure AI practices. For those interested in shaping a trustworthy AI future, JOIN US here

Matched TAIM controls

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

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.593, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.588, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.586, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: unknown-scammers, unknown-scammers-in-cyprus, unknown-scammers-impersonating-nikos-christodoulides
Alleged developer: unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties: nikos-christodoulides, general-public, general-public-of-cyprus, epistemic-integrity

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1293

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.