HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

Tbilisi-Based Call Center Allegedly Uses AI-Driven Scripts to Defraud Over 6,000 Victims of $35 Million

March 5, 2025

Uncover the details of a significant financial scam, reportedly conducted from Tbilisi, Georgia, that leveraged AI technologies. The scheme employed deepfake celebrity endorsements and manipulated trading dashboards to defraud over 6,000 victims, leading to losses totaling $35M. Agents at the call center were trained with AI-driven persuasion tactics, deceiving individuals into investing more money under false promises of profits.

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Alleged deployer
scammer-operatives-in-georgia-bulgaria-cyprus-and-spain, meri-shotadze, golden-currencies, akaki-kevkhishvili, ak-group, admiralsfx
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers, third-party-ai-service-providers-for-call-center-training, fraudulent-trading-platform-developers
Alleged harmed parties
small-business-owners, retirees-seeking-investment-opportunities, people-with-neurological-disorders, individuals-deceived-by-celebrity-deepfake-impersonations, financial-professionals, financial-fraud-victims, elderly-investors

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/962

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.