Deepfake: they steal $ 35 million with a phone call

At the start of 2020, a vocal deepfake helped steal $ 35 million from the United Arab Emirates.

As stated in the media Forbes, it is a bank manager who was the victim of this huge scam. The latter received a phone call, and thinking he recognized the voice of his interlocutor, he triggered the requests.

At the end of the line, an artificial intelligence using the synthesis technique of voice cloning, to pretend to be a company director. He thus made believe that his company was about to make an acquisition, and for that, the bank had to give the authorization to release 35 million dollars by transfer.

Completely deceived by the voice he believed to be that of the person he knew, the bank manager then made the transfers after receiving false confirmations sent to his mailbox, thinking that everything seemed legitimate.

17 people involved

According to investigators in Dubai, the criminals have exploited this ploy which consists in using a technology deepfake or also called hyper-trick “to simulate a voice”. They indicate that at least seventeen people are involved in this big fraud and that the money was subsequently distributed to bank accounts in several countries, so that it could not be traced.

In addition, Dubai Police asked for help from U.S. investigators in locating $ 400,000 in stolen funds, which entered accounts held by the Centennial Bank, one of the largest banks in the United States.

Asked by Forbes, the British cybersecurity expert Jake Moore explains that “the manipulation of audio, which is easier to orchestrate than the creation of visual deepfakes, will only increase and without education and awareness to this new type of attack vector, along with better authentication methods, more companies are likely to fall victim to very convincing conversations ”.

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