The $25 million deepfake video call
A finance worker wired a fortune after a meeting where everyone but him was fake.
- TargetMultinational firm, Hong Kong office
- What was fakedThe CFO and several colleagues, live on a call
- MethodDeepfake video conference
- Disclosed byHong Kong Police
What happened
An employee in the finance department of a multinational company received a message about a confidential transaction. Suspicious that it might be a phishing attempt, the worker joined a video call to verify it, and there was the company's chief financial officer, along with several recognizable colleagues. Reassured by familiar faces and voices, the employee carried out a series of transfers totaling roughly US$25.6 million.
Every other person on that call was a deepfake. The fraudsters had assembled convincing synthetic versions of real staff, most likely built from publicly available video and audio, and used them to stage an entire meeting.
How it surfaced
The loss came to light only after the employee later checked with the company's head office and discovered no such transaction had been authorized. Hong Kong police subsequently disclosed the case as one of the first known examples of a multi-person deepfake used to defraud a business in real time.
Why it matters
This is the moment 'seeing is believing' broke for live video. The defense was never going to be a sharper eye; it was process: out-of-band verification, callback procedures, and treating any urgent payment request as suspect no matter who appears to be asking. Authenticity now lives in the workflow, not the webcam.
Sources: CNN Business · South China Morning Post. Further reading in the archive trackers.