Purported Deepfake Impersonation of Starmangalsutra Director Reportedly Led to ₹10.70 Crore (Approximately US$1.11 Million) in Unauthorized Fund Transfers

July 15, 2026

Starmangalsutra Private Limited, a jewelery-manufacturing subsidiary of India-based Sky Gold and Diamonds, reportedly lost ₹10.70 crore (about US$1.1 million) after unknown actors compromised a company-issued phone and laptop and used purported deepfake methods to impersonate a director. An employee, reportedly believing the instructions were genuine, transferred funds to unknown bank accounts before verification showed the director had issued no such instructions. The incident highlights the risks of AI-powered attacks on corporate security. Through contributors—JOIN US—to learn more about the latest developments in AI governance and harm prevention strategies, we invite you to engage with us and share your thoughts on this critical matter.

Alleged deployer

synthetic-media-creators, scammers-in-india, scammers, deepfake-creators

Alleged developer

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

Alleged harmed parties

victims-of-deepfake-enabled-fraud, unnamed-employee-of-starmangalsutra, unnamed-director-of-starmangalsutra, targets-of-scams, targets-of-scammers-in-india, starmangalsutra, sky-gold-and-diamonds, epistemic-integrity, privacy

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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.