Purportedly AI-Generated Deepfake Investment Ads Defrauded 5,000 Swedish Investors of 500 Million SEK

October 24, 2025

In 2025, approximately 5,000 Swedish investors lost an estimated 500 million SEK (~$52.5 million USD) to a deepfake investment scam that circulated on Meta platforms. The scam allegedly used fabricated videos and profiles of finance figures such as journalist Gabriel Mellqvist and investor Günter Mårder to promote false stock tips, which were part of pump-and-dump schemes.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers, unknown-pump-and-dump-scammers, unknown-scammers-impersonating-gabriel-mellqvist, unknown-scammers-impersonating-gunter-marder
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
gunter-marder, gabriel-mellqvist, swedish-investors, general-public-of-sweden, epistemic-integrity

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1256

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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