Purported Deepfake Impersonating Dubai Crown Prince Reportedly Used to Defraud Filipino Domestic Worker

July 3, 2026

A Filipino domestic worker identified as "Maria" reportedly paid ₱100,000 (about $1,625) after a scammer deployed purportedly manipulated real-time video to impersonate Dubai Crown Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed during WhatsApp calls. The scammer reportedly claimed the money was for a marriage certificate and “royal membership card” that would help her secure a job in Dubai. Maria reportedly ended contact after noticing that the Facebook account was based in Nigeria. …contributors—JOIN US—to learn more.

Alleged deployer

scammers-in-nigeria, scammers, romance-scammers, employment-scammers, cybercriminals

Alleged developer

synthetic-video-generation-technology-developers, synthetic-media-generation-technology-developers, deepfake-technology-developers

Alleged harmed parties

whatsapp-users, targets-of-scams-in-the-united-arab-emirates, targets-of-scams, targets-of-romance-scams, targets-of-employment-scams, maria-(victim-of-dubai-prince-impersonation-scam), hamdan-bin-mohammed-al-maktoum, facebook-users, social-media-users

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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.