Woman tells Maltese court she lost €53,250 after a purported Robert Abela deepfake
A woman told a Maltese court that she first encountered a purported Robert Abela deepfake on Facebook on 22 July 2025. She said she subsequently paid €53,250, almost all her life savings, into a fraudulent investment scheme. The accused in the associated proceedings pleaded not guilty. The reports relay testimony and police allegations; they do not establish guilt or technically verify the videos.
- AI system
- Unidentified video tool
- Unknown
- Occurred
- 22 Jul 2025
- Reported
- 7 October 2025
- Event location
- Malta
- What the AI did
- Communicated with the person
- Reported harm
- Financial Loss
- Whose AI use
- Someone else’s AI use
- Setting
- Finance
- Evidence
- AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account
- 3 claims: 3 reported. 2 open questions
- People reported harmed
- At least 1 person
AI system as recorded: Reported AI-generated political impersonation videos
What Happened
A woman told a Maltese court that she first encountered a purported Robert Abela deepfake on Facebook on 22 July 2025. She said she subsequently paid €53,250, almost all her life savings, into a fraudulent investment scheme. The accused in the associated proceedings pleaded not guilty. The reports relay testimony and police allegations; they do not establish guilt or technically verify the videos.
Reported harm
Reported loss of €53,250, almost all the woman's life savings
What remains unknown
- The video-generation tool and first date of other impersonation videos are unknown.
- No trial outcome or later recovery was inspected.
What the evidence supports
AI involvement: reported. Court reports call the investment videos deepfakes. No video, forensic record or transcript was independently examined. A daughter's suspicion of ChatGPT messages is not adopted as a separate established AI use.
3 claims: 3 reported. What the statuses mean
Reported The witness said she encountered the purported Abela deepfake on Facebook on 22 July 2025.
Causal attribution. The inspected reporting describes this account. Claims remain attributed and causation is alleged; multiple reports of the same victim or police/court account are one independence group.
- maltatoday.com.mt(opens in new tab) supports · English
Article body: witness first encounter with Abela video and subsequent investment contact.
Reported She told the court that she paid €53,250, practically all her life savings.
Causal attribution. The inspected reporting describes this account. Claims remain attributed and causation is alleged; multiple reports of the same victim or police/court account are one independence group.
- maltatoday.com.mt(opens in new tab) supports · English
Article body: witness total payment statement following the police operation.
Reported The accused pleaded not guilty; police used counterfeit money in a later controlled delivery.
Causal attribution. The inspected reporting describes this account. Claims remain attributed and causation is alleged; multiple reports of the same victim or police/court account are one independence group.
- maltatoday.com.mt(opens in new tab) supports · English
Article body: plea and controlled delivery paragraphs.
Sources
2 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.
- MaltaToday, 7 October 2025, courtroom testimony(opens in new tab)
s1 · maltatoday.com.mt · Journalistic · English · Inspected · 7 October 2025 · Shares an underlying account with another listed source · Primary
- journalistic supporting source(opens in new tab)
s2 · newsbook.com.mt · Journalistic · English · Inspected · Shares an underlying account with another listed source
How the sources were read, and where the events happened
Event countries: Malta. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Malta.
The cash handovers, police operation and court proceedings are explicitly in Malta. The woman's country of residence is not separately established.
Reviewed for publication 2026-09-30: An inspected source describes a concrete person-level adverse experience connected to the specified AI use. Statements remain attributed, private identities are minimized, and unknown dates, counts and technical details are preserved.
People reported harmed in this case
At least 1 person
0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed
One testifying woman is counted. The controlled €10,000 delivery was counterfeit money, not an additional personal loss.
Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.
Cite this case
Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.
APA
NOPE. (2026). Woman tells Maltese court she lost €53,250 after a purported Robert Abela deepfake. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2025-malta-reported-abela-deepfake-investment-loss
BibTeX
@misc{2025_malta_reported_abela_deepfake_investment_loss,
title = {Woman tells Maltese court she lost €53,250 after a purported Robert Abela deepfake},
author = {NOPE},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {AI incidents},
url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2025-malta-reported-abela-deepfake-investment-loss}
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