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}
} Related cases
Bengaluru: a security guard says a WhatsApp video call in which an alleged deepfake 'Chief Minister Vijay' offered him financial aid led to fake 'processing' charges and a fake CBI fine, and he lost more than Rs 1.04 lakh; Byappanahalli police register an IT Act case (September 2026)
A security guard in Bengaluru, originally from Odisha, told the Times of India that on 9 September 2026 he answered a WhatsApp video call in which a face and voice presented as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay introduced himself in Hindi, asked his name, work and where he lived and pressed him to accept financial help. A 'manager' then promised Rs 11 lakh, said Rs 5 lakh had been allotted to him and asked for a Rs 5,000 exchange charge, then Rs 18,000 to unlock a supposedly locked PIN; a caller posing as a CBI officer demanded more than Rs 50,000 as a fine. The fraudsters sent a fake allotment letter and a purported CBI officer's identity proof. He paid more than Rs 1.04 lakh through a digital payment app before refusing a further Rs 50,000 demand, called the 1930 cybercrime helpline and went to Byappanahalli police, who registered a case under the Information Technology Act. The Times of India says the fraudster allegedly used a deepfake AI-generated video and calls it the first such case reported in the city. No arrest is reported, and no link to the Tamil Nadu CB-CID deepfake case or its Alwar arrest has been established.
India: AI deepfake videos of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay offering 'financial assistance' were used to defraud people in Madhya Pradesh and other states; a Rajasthan man was arrested
In 2026 AI-generated videos showing a simulated Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay speaking in a fabricated Hindi voice circulated on Facebook and other platforms, urging viewers to contact a WhatsApp number to receive money for education, medical treatment and other needs. The Tamil Nadu Crime Branch-CID detected the videos during routine monitoring, registered a case on 1 September 2026 under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act, and traced the scheme to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. On 12 September a 28-year-old man from Alwar district was arrested with Rajasthan Police, brought to Tamil Nadu on a transit warrant and remanded in judicial custody; a phone, SIM cards and a CPU were seized. Investigators traced a man in Madhya Pradesh who had lost money, and said people in several states were cheated. The CB-CID is also examining similar videos posted from Facebook accounts suspected to be run from Pakistan.
Kazakhstan: the Prosecutor General's Office reported 119 trading-fraud cases registered in about six weeks, lured by deepfake videos of Elon Musk, Pavel Durov and other public figures and fake 'AI' platforms; a Taldykorgan woman transferred more than 7 million tenge
On 16 September 2026 the Prosecutor General's Office of Kazakhstan warned of an investment-fraud scheme in which criminals advertise non-existent projects on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms using deepfake videos of well-known people and fake 'AI' investment platforms promising very high passive income: 'Kaspi AI' with Mikhail Lomtadze, 'Quantum AI' with Elon Musk, 'TON' with Pavel Durov, and 'people's investments' in KazMunayGas or Gazprom fronted by news presenters from Khabar 24, KTK and Channel One. The office said 119 such cases had been registered across the country in the previous one and a half months. Its example: in September 2026 a woman from Taldykorgan saw an Instagram advertisement offering high returns from share trading, left her details through the link, was contacted by the fraudsters and, following their instructions, transferred more than 7 million tenge to third-party accounts; the money and supposed dividends appeared in a fake wallet that she could not withdraw from. A pre-trial investigation is under way. The office urged people not to trust guaranteed-return offers or transfer money to strangers.
Brazil: scammers used AI-cloned voices and images of children with cancer in fake donation campaigns; 16 arrested in Operação Sophia
On 14 July 2026 the Rio Grande do Sul Civil Police launched Operação Sophia against a group that used AI voice cloning and deepfake to turn real fundraising campaigns of children with cancer into fake donation appeals: AI-generated child voices asked for money in videos boosted by pages such as 'Clube de Doadores' and 'Unidos pelo Amor', leading donors to lookalike sites that issued Pix codes to shell companies. Sixteen people were arrested across five states. In the campaign that started the investigation — using the image of Kelen Santos's daughter, who was in cancer treatment — police traced R$294,500 diverted, and the investigation found a financial-hub company that moved more than R$1.7 million. The family had to tell congratulating donors that their money had gone to a scam.
If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.