HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Reportedly Sustained Multi-Celebrity Deepfake Persona Scam Targeting Vulnerable Southampton Resident

June 28, 2025

In 2025, a Southampton, UK resident named Paul Davis was reportedly targeted by scammers using deepfake videos and images of multiple celebrities over a period of about five months. The perpetrators allegedly switched personas to sustain a romance and prize scam, extracting £200 in gift cards. This incident marks a shift from one-off celebrity deepfakes towards persistent, multi-persona targeting of vulnerable victims, underscoring the need for trustworthy AI governance and harm prevention measures.

This case highlights the importance of Project Cerebellum's AI governance efforts and the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) in fostering safe and secure AI practices. Join us to contribute to the cause and help shape the future of AI incident management. JOIN US

Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
paul-davis, general-public-of-united-kingdom, general-public-of-southampton-united-kingdom, emotionally-vulnerable-individuals, jennifer-aniston, mark-zuckerberg, elon-musk, ellie-goulding

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1122

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.