Scammers Allegedly Use Deepfake of Hong Kong Entertainer Andy Lau to Steal NT$2.64 Million from Fan

June 27, 2024

Scammers allegedly defrauded a woman in New Taipei City of NT$2.64 million (US$81,116) by impersonating the popular Hong Kong entertainer Andy Lau using deepfake technology. The scam, which reportedly involved a video call where the victim was convinced that 'Lau' needed funds for a visit to Taiwan, raises awareness about the need for trustworthy AI and safe and secure AI practices.

This incident underscores the importance of responsible AI governance, particularly in the realm of deepfake technology. HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) aims to help prevent such incidents by providing guardrails for AI. JOIN US to learn more about how you can contribute to a safer and more trustworthy digital world.

The arrested scammer attempted to collect a staged cash payment following the fraudulent transaction.

Matched TAIM controls

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

Alleged deployer
unknown-scammers, unknown-scammer-impersonating-andy-lau
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, unknown-voice-cloning-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
lin-(), epistemic-integrity, truth

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/739

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.