Skip to main content
NOPE
High reported severity

Hong Kong police report a victim lost over HK$10m after a voice message from a hijacked WhatsApp account imitated the victim's father, reportedly by deepfake

Hong Kong police said on their CyberDefender social media page, reported on 29 July 2026, that a victim received a WhatsApp voice message from the victim's father's hijacked account asking for an urgent transfer of HK$1 million to a friend. The voice and manner of speech were very similar to the father's, and the victim made the transfer, then a further HK$2 million requested the same way, then payments to several bank accounts on different pretexts, until the savings account was empty. The victim realised the fraud only after police made contact, with a reported total loss of more than HK$10 million. Police said scammers in WhatsApp hijackings may use AI to fake the voices of people close to the victim, and outlets that published reports on 30 and 31 August 2026 of a police briefing described the case as one involving a deepfake voice message imitating the father, while one outlet said the deepfake use was suspected. No source reports analysis of the audio. The loss and the voice characterisation rest on police statements relayed by outlets, and the month of July 2026 rests on one outlet.

AI system
Unidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)
Occurred
Jul 2026
Reported
29 July 2026
Event location
Hong Kong SAR China
What the AI did
Communicated with the person · Depicted or impersonated the person
Reported harm
Financial Loss
Whose AI use
Someone else’s AI use
Setting
Finance · Everyday life
Evidence
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 7 sources, 1 underlying account
7 claims: 7 reported. 6 open questions
People reported harmed
1 person

AI system as recorded: Unidentified voice imitation or deepfake voice tool (reported by police as a possibility and by briefing reports as used, tool not identified)

Reported harm

Hong Kong police said the victim transferred money repeatedly after a voice message from the father's hijacked WhatsApp account and further requests made the same way and on different pretexts, until the savings account was empty, with a reported cumulative loss of more than HK$10 million. The figure is a police statement relayed by outlets and no bank record was inspected.

What remains unknown

  • No source reports analysis of the voice message or identifies a tool. Police wording on 29 July was that scammers may use AI to fake voices, the later briefing reports describe this case as a deepfake voice message, and wepro180 calls the deepfake use suspected.
  • The month of the events rests on one outlet's phrase for last month (wepro180, 31 August 2026) and on police calling the case recent on 29 July 2026. The days of the first message and of the seven transfers are not stated.
  • The loss is stated as more than HK$10 million by the police post and most reports. World Journal, relaying Ta Kung Pao, says more than HK$17 million for what appears to be the same case, and that figure is not adopted. No source ties the briefing case to the 29 July post by identity. The link rests on matching facts (the father's hijacked account, a voice message, repeated transfers, more than HK$10 million, frequent transfers between the two) and on a related-report line in the Sing Tao Headline briefing article that points to a story about a voice-imitation case (the linked story was not inspected), while the personal details some outlets print for the victim do not fully match between the 29 July reports and the briefing reports.
  • The victim's residence is reported differently by HK01 and TechRadar, and outlets give differing identity details for the victim, so none is recorded.
  • The father is not reported to have lost money and is not counted. The hijacking of the father's account is reported by police and its method is not stated for this case.
  • The SCMP page was read through an archive capture cut off at a paywall, so the remainder of that article was not read.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: suspected. The police wording in the 29 July 2026 post that describes this victim is hedged: scammers in WhatsApp account hijackings may use AI to fake the voices of people close to the victim. Outlets that published reports on 30 and 31 August 2026 of a police briefing (The Standard, Sing Tao Headline) describe a deepfake voice message imitating the father, but those reports are tied to this victim by matching facts and not by an explicit police statement, and wepro180 calls the deepfake use suspected. No source reports analysis of the audio or identifies a tool.

7 claims: 7 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported Hong Kong police said on their CyberDefender page that a victim received a WhatsApp voice message from the victim's father's account, which scammers had hijacked, asking for an urgent transfer of HK$1 million to a friend, and that the voice and manner of speech were very similar to the father's, so the victim made the transfer.

Causal attribution. Hong Kong police statement as relayed by outlets. SCMP, HK01 and TechRadar rely on the same CyberDefender post, so this is one reporting chain. No bank record or copy of the audio was inspected.

  • scmp.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    The scammers first sent a voice message to the victim claiming they urgently needed to transfer HK$1 million to a friend.
  • scmp.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    even though the account had already been taken over by scammers
  • hk01.com(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    近日有騙徒騎劫WhatsApp帳戶，假扮受害人父親，以語音訊息訛稱急需100萬元轉賬予朋友
  • hk01.com(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    由於聲線及說話方式極其相似，受害人不虞有詐，按指示完成轉賬
  • techradar.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
    voice and manner of speech [of the message] matched his father’s.
Reported According to police, the scammers then obtained a further HK$2 million the same way and asked for more transfers to several bank accounts on different pretexts, which the victim carried out until the victim's savings account was empty, after which contact stopped.

Causal attribution. Police account relayed by HK01 and repeated by TechRadar. Same reporting chain as c1.

Reported Police said the victim realised the fraud only after police made contact, with a cumulative loss of more than HK$10 million. The briefing reports repeat a loss of over HK$10 million.

Causal attribution. Police figure relayed by outlets. No bank record was inspected. One outlet (World Journal, relaying Ta Kung Pao) gives more than HK$17 million for what appears to be the same case, which the other reports and the police post do not support, so the more than HK$10 million figure is used.

Reported In the same 29 July post, police said that in WhatsApp account hijackings scammers may use AI to fake the voices of people close to the victim, and warned against relying on a similar-sounding voice message.

Causal attribution. Police wording is a general possibility ('may'). It does not state that the voice in this case was confirmed to be AI-generated.

Reported Outlets that published reports on 30 and 31 August 2026 of a police briefing (the date of the briefing itself is not stated) described this case as one in which a deepfake-generated voice message imitating the victim's father was used. One outlet described the deepfake use as suspected. No source reports analysis of the audio.

Causal attribution. Police briefing as reported by outlets. The Standard and Sing Tao Headline state deepfake use without a hedge, wepro180 says suspected, and none reports how police established it. The link between the briefing case and the 29 July post is inferred from matching facts (father's hijacked account, voice message, repeated transfers, over HK$10 million) and is not stated by police. The personal details some outlets print for the victim also differ between the 29 July reports and the briefing reports.

Reported Police called the case recent on 29 July 2026, and one outlet said the voice message was received in the month before its 31 August 2026 report, which is July 2026.

Causal attribution. The month rests on one outlet's phrase for last month. The police post gives no date, and neither source gives the days of the first message or of the seven transfers.

Reported HK01, citing unnamed sources, reported that the victim made seven transfers through the Faster Payment System to three local bank accounts supplied by the scammers.

Causal attribution. Single-outlet detail attributed by HK01 to unnamed sources. The police post does not state it.

  • hk01.com(opens in new tab) supports · Chinese
    分7次以「轉數快」將逾千萬港元，轉帳至騙徒提供的3個本地銀行帳戶

Sources

7 sources inspected, from 1 underlying account. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other. 1 more citation is recorded with the case.

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read through an Internet Archive capture of about 1,800 characters that stops at a paywall after the first paragraphs. The rest of the article was not read. Applies to s1.

Read in the original Traditional Chinese. English claims are the reviewer's paraphrase of the Chinese passages, not a certified translation. Applies to s2.

Rewrite of the SCMP report. It states as fact that AI was used, which is stronger than the police wording of 29 July. Applies to s3.

Report of a police briefing, published 31 August 2026 (Hong Kong time). Applies to s4.

Read in the original Traditional Chinese. English claims are the reviewer's paraphrase of the Chinese passages, not a certified translation. Report of the same police briefing. Applies to s5, s6.

Read in the original Traditional Chinese. English claims are the reviewer's paraphrase of the Chinese passages, not a certified translation. Relays a Ta Kung Pao report of the briefing and gives a different loss figure. The same text dates the home-purchase case to April where Sing Tao Headline and wepro180 say March, so the relay may contain errors. Applies to s7.

Event countries: Hong Kong SAR China. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

HK01, citing unnamed sources, reports that the victim made seven Faster Payment System transfers to three local bank accounts supplied by the scammers, which places the receiving accounts in Hong Kong. HK01 also says the victim lives on the mainland and TechRadar calls the victim a Hong Kong man, and the police statements give no residence, so no affected-person country is recorded. No court proceeding is reported.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-30: Hong Kong police statements (a CyberDefender post of 29 July 2026 and a briefing reported on 30 and 31 August 2026) as relayed by SCMP, HK01, TechRadar, The Standard, Sing Tao Headline and wepro180. Every fact about the victim comes from the police, so the outlets are treated as one reporting chain and every claim is reported. The victim is not named and identity details given by some outlets are not recorded. The month is taken from one outlet and from police calling the case recent.

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

0 AI participants · 1 other person harmed

One person: the victim who made the transfers and lost the money, as stated by police. The father whose account was hijacked and whose voice was imitated is not reported to have lost money and is not counted. The 150 WhatsApp hijacking cases police mention for the previous two weeks have no individual account here and are not counted.

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). Hong Kong police report a victim lost over HK$10m after a voice message from a hijacked WhatsApp account imitated the victim's father, reportedly by deepfake. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-hong-kong-whatsapp-account-hijack-reported-deepfake-voice-message-imitating-father-hk10m-loss

BibTeX

@misc{2026_hong_kong_whatsapp_account_hijack_reported_deepfake_voice_message_imitating_father_hk10m_loss,
  title = {Hong Kong police report a victim lost over HK\$10m after a voice message from a hijacked WhatsApp account imitated the victim's father, reportedly by deepfake},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-hong-kong-whatsapp-account-hijack-reported-deepfake-voice-message-imitating-father-hk10m-loss}
}

Related cases

Low Unidentified voice-cloning tool (suspected)

Bhopal: a security guard lost about Rs 35,000 to a caller whose voice sounded like a friend, reported as a suspected AI voice-cloning fraud

Free Press Journal reported on 4 October 2026 that a 50-year-old security guard from the TT Nagar area of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, was cheated of nearly Rs 35,000 after a caller impersonated a friend by mimicking the friend's voice. According to the report, the call came on 30 September from an unidentified person who claimed to need money urgently and sent a QR code. The guard made three transfers (Rs 5,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000), then reached the friend on the friend's own number and learned that the friend had not called. The outlet calls it a suspected case of AI-enabled fraud with a suspected AI-cloned voice. TT Nagar police registered a case and opened an investigation. No source confirms that the voice was AI-generated.

Medium Unidentified voice-cloning tool

Picos, Piauí, Brazil: a digital influencer lost more than R$56,000 when fraudsters sent him audio messages in his uncle's AI-cloned voice 'confirming' a car he was buying in Fortaleza

On Monday 10 August 2026 a digital influencer from Picos, in the centre-south of Piauí, began negotiating a car advertised online for sale in Fortaleza (Ceará), where an uncle of his lives, and asked the sellers to take the car to the uncle so he could inspect it. On Tuesday 11 August a contact using a different number but the uncle's photo sent him audio messages in a voice identical to his uncle's, generated with artificial intelligence, saying the car was in good condition and telling him to make the bank transfer. Believing he was speaking to his uncle, he transferred the money; when he then called the uncle's real number he learned he had been defrauded. The loss exceeded R$56,000, money he says he had saved for years. He registered a police report on 11 August; the Piauí property-crimes unit (Depatri) is investigating and he is seeking a refund from the banks. The account is the victim's own, reported by G1 Piauí on 13 August 2026 from his social-media posts and an interview; the police unit did not respond to G1 before publication.

Low Unidentified voice-cloning tool

Natore, Bangladesh: callers told a health-complex employee that his son had been arrested with drugs, then used an AI-cloned copy of the son's voice to win his trust and took Tk 40,000; two men were arrested in Gaibandha in September 2026

According to a press release from Special Response Battalion-13 (SRB-13), relayed by Ajker Patrika, DBC News and NTV, on 20 July 2026 a man who works at the Natore Sadar upazila health complex received a call saying that his younger son had been arrested by police with drugs. The callers then used AI to imitate the son's voice so that the father believed the story, and demanded money to get the son released. He sent a total of Tk 40,000 in two payments through the mobile financial service Nagad, and realised it was a fraud when he reached his son directly. He filed a fraud case at Natore Sadar police station on 25 September 2026. That evening SRB-13 arrested two men, described as the ring's leader and an associate, at their homes in Gobindaganj, Gaibandha, seizing nine mobile phones, a passport and Tk 14,100 in cash; SRB says they admitted involvement during initial questioning and handed them to the police for further legal action, and NTV reports they were sent to Gaibandha district jail through the court on 26 September.

Medium Unidentified voice-cloning tool

Attica, Greece: a fraud ring cloned relatives' voices with AI to 'confirm' fake fibre-installation instructions; two collectors arrested in Nea Ionia with €30,000 of a victim's valuables, at least six cases since July 2026

On 18 September 2026 the Hellenic Police announced that its Organised Crime Directorate had dismantled a criminal organisation, active since at least early July 2026, whose members defrauded and robbed residents of Attica by posing on the phone as staff of the electricity distributor ΔΕΔΔΗΕ, mobile operators or fibre-optic installers. When a target hesitated, the callers asked for a relative's phone number, called that relative under a mobile-operator pretext to obtain a voice sample, cloned the voice with an AI tool and then played the cloned voice to the target to 'confirm' the instructions. Two men aged 23 and 25, described as the ring's 'collectors', were arrested in Nea Ionia just after removing valuables worth €30,000 from a victim's home; the case file, covering criminal organisation, fraud and aggravated theft with proceeds above €120,000, names four more people. Police have so far confirmed at least five further cases with the same method and estimate the group's total proceeds above €1 million. The two arrested were brought before the prosecutor and referred to an investigating judge.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents