Taranaki, New Zealand Resident Allegedly Defrauded of $224K in Bitcoin Scam Using Deepfake of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon

July 15, 2024

A resident of Taranaki, New Zealand reportedly fell victim to a Bitcoin scam involving an alleged deepfake video of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. The AI-generated content, shared on Facebook, was used to promote cryptocurrency investments targeting superannuitants. Scammers posing as financial advisors gained remote access to the victim’s computer and created accounts to facilitate fund transfers.

This incident underscores the importance of trustworthy AI, safe and secure practices in our digital landscape. It is a prime example of how malicious actors can exploit AI for harm. To mitigate such incidents and foster responsible AI governance, consider joining Project Cerebellum and contributing to their HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern, Map, Measure, or Manage) efforts.

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Matched TAIM controls

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Alleged deployer
scammers-posing-as-christopher-luxon, unknown-scammers
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
superannuitants, pensioners, new-zealanders, jill-creasy, elderly-investors

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/907

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.