Event date unknownChinaUnidentified video tool
According to a CCTV report of August 2026 quoting the deputy head of the criminal division of the Yuhua District People's Court in Changsha, Hunan, a university student close to graduation bought access to a technique that turned still face photos into AI-generated moving face videos able to pass one bank payment platform's face-recognition check. Upstream members of fraud groups, which CCTV says usually lure people into installing remote-control software, sent him the victims' personal details and photos; he converted the photos into AI face videos through a third-party website and, with the verification codes, reset the victims' payment passwords so that a money-laundering crew could move money out of their linked bank accounts. In under four months the accounts of three victims lost more than 50,000 yuan in total. The court, taking into account his surrender, admission and compensation of the victims, sentenced him to one year and ten months in prison and a 3,000 yuan fine; the judgment has taken effect. The dates of the thefts and of the judgment are not reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 30/10/2026
Event date unknownLebanonUnidentified video tool
In a statement published on 28 October 2026, Lebanon's Internal Security Forces (ISF) said their Cybercrime and Intellectual Property Bureau had received a complaint, filed with the competent judiciary, against Facebook and TikTok pages that promoted various medicines and preparations using videos generated by artificial intelligence, in which the complainant appeared in a way that falsely suggested the complainant was promoting the products. The products were said to treat stomach and joint pain, prostate and heart problems, blood sugar and blood pressure, and included sexual enhancers and slimming preparations. A patrol caught two people in the act of handing dozens of orders to a delivery company, with 13,602 US dollars they said came from daily sales; raids in Beirut and other areas led to further arrests and the seizure of thousands of containers. The ISF said some mixtures did not match the ingredients on the labels, that paper records of thousands of orders indicated a large number of buyers, and that the Ministry of Public Health was testing the seized products. The ISF did not say how it established that the videos were AI-generated, and the complainant is not named.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026
Event date unknownTaiwanUnidentified video tool
Taiwanese police said in June 2025 that a fraud call centre in Shalu district, Taichung, had targeted overseas Chinese women in the United States and Canada with romance-investment fraud. According to the police account reported by SETN and carried by Yahoo News Taiwan on 4 June 2025, the call centre created a range of male personas, cultivated relationships with the women, and video-chatted with them through an 'AI face replacement tool' that swapped the operator's face for a persona's; because the picture was very realistic, police say, many victims believed it, after which they were talked into investing in fake energy products and sending money to accounts the suspects supplied. Police say analysis of seized phones identified seven women in the US and Canada who were defrauded, with losses of about NT$3.5 million so far, and that the number of victims and the amount were still being compiled. A photo caption in the report says officers demonstrated the face-replacement tool. The call centre was raided in November 2024, and nine suspects were referred to Taichung prosecutors, seven of them detained; no indictment or verdict has been found.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026
24 Aug 2026SwitzerlandHelvetia Clara (reported)
In a LinkedIn article published on 14 September 2026, a Helvetia customer says that on 24 August 2026 he reported a private liability claim through Clara, the insurer's digital assistant, and received an automated confirmation. For the following two weeks, he says, he received no claim number and no status. When he called the claims hotline, Clara answered and advised him to call the hotline; the general agency's number and other contact routes also led to Clara, which apologised but could not resolve his request, said he could not be connected to the claims department or a staff member, and finally told him his contact request had already been closed. Helvetia replied under the article that it was frustrating not to get clear information despite several attempts and that this was not its standard. Helvetia has said the chat assistant runs on generative AI (GPT-4). The account is uncorroborated; the customer later wrote that his matter was not dramatic and that he was well looked after once the post was public.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/10/2026
Sept 2025IrelandUnidentified video tool
In September 2025, during the campaign for Ireland's presidential election, fake videos circulated mainly on Facebook and Instagram showing Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys endorsing a high-return investment platform called Quantum AI, presented as an RTÉ News segment. Bank of Ireland warned consumers on 11 September that the content was entirely fabricated using AI-driven voice and image cloning and that more such adverts were likely, without stating how it reached that view. A spokesman for Humphreys said the videos had been reported to Meta and called for their immediate removal, and Meta said that evening that it had taken them down. No person who lost money to these particular videos is described in the sources.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources · Added 29/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool
A Chinese-Australian woman who lost A$49,000 to a scam in 2023 and later spoke to Australian media about it found earlier in 2026 that her face had been taken and used in AI scam videos, according to a News Corp Australia investigation compiled in Chinese by the community news site Yeeyi on 28 October 2026. The Facebook video adverts, which used footage from her earlier media interviews, claimed that Interpol could help investment-scam victims recover their money. The security firm Infoblox, which investigated the adverts, traced an operator who used fake news pages to run polished AI video adverts that sent users to phishing sites promising to recover losses. The woman says the advert disgusted her, that the trauma of the original scam has not healed and that she fears other victims will be drawn in. Meta removed the adverts using her image after Hong Kong media reported them, but Infoblox says similar scam content remains widespread. The report does not name the AI tool or say how many people were deceived.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/10/2026
13 Oct 2025 to 26 Nov 2025BrazilUnidentified video tool
The Federal District Civil Police (PCDF) in Brazil say a criminal group ran fake online donation campaigns that used images of elderly people, children and seriously ill people, and used artificial intelligence tools, including deepfakes, to make fake videos with the images of the singer Gusttavo Lima and the Catholic priests Marcelo Rossi and Fábio de Melo. The posts circulated on social media and sent people to pages imitating legitimate charity appeals; the money went to bank accounts the group controlled. Police say one company linked to the group received 215,575 transactions totalling about R$9.8 million between 13 October and 26 November 2025, mostly of R$30 and R$50, and that the number of transactions does not necessarily match the number of victims. On 28 October 2026 the PCDF launched Operação Cáritas with six preventive arrest warrants and search warrants in the Federal District and four states; five suspects had been arrested by the time of most reports (g1 reported six). How the police established that the videos were AI-made is not disclosed, and no response from the people depicted is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 29/10/2026
2026FinlandUnidentified AI tool
Humppila, a municipality of about 2,000 residents in Kanta-Häme, Finland, abolished its administrative director and technical director posts on the new mayor's proposal, which, according to Helsingin Sanomat as relayed by Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, covered 150,000 euros of the municipality's savings need; Yle reports that the two office holders were dismissed in spring 2026 and that the abolitions followed the municipality's need to improve its weak finances. Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, relaying an interview first published by Helsingin Sanomat, reports that according to the mayor both directors' tasks are now done with the help of AI, and quotes the mayor as saying the writing of new appendices to the administrative regulations was done with AI in a day. A municipal statement said the main aim of its reforms was not to increase AI use or shrink the administration but to secure services. The former administrative director told Iltalehti the abolition of the post was unlawful, saying the tasks have not ceased and that AI cannot bear official responsibility or form a ground for dismissal; the mayor says the process was lawful. According to the former director, the abolition was brought into the change negotiations as the only option without the five days' written advance notice the law requires, and the lawyers' union Juristiliitto assessed the negotiations as at least careless and presented the municipality with a claim for full compensation. The former director appealed to the Hämeenlinna Administrative Court in spring 2026 and reports filing a criminal complaint with Häme police on 9 September 2026, which police confirmed receiving without deciding whether to investigate. Finland's Deputy Parliamentary Ombudsman opened an own-initiative inquiry into the use of AI in the municipality's official work, asking what tasks were given to AI and how lawful decision-making and official responsibility are ensured. No tool is named, and no court or Ombudsman finding is reported.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources · Added 28/10/2026
Event date unknownRussiaGemini (reported)
In a first-person article published by the Russian personal-finance magazine T—Zh on 29 April 2026, a buyer says they wanted a limited-edition Xbox controller from a long-established seller on the Ozon marketplace and, unsure about judging colours, uploaded photos from the listing and reviews to Gemini, asking it to compare them with Microsoft's original photos and give a verdict. The buyer says Gemini was completely certain the controller was original, which strengthened their own assumption, and they bought it. The delivered controller's left stick drifted from the first use; a repairer's programmer would not connect to it, showing it was not made by Microsoft. The seller first refused a return without a service-centre report; the buyer paid 500 roubles for one, then received a refund, but the marketplace did not reimburse the 500 roubles. The buyer acknowledges the listing photos may have shown a genuine unit and that the counterfeit may have been sent only to them.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 28/10/2026
Jun 2025Malaysia, JapanUnidentified video tool
Taiwan's Taichung District Prosecutors Office said in January 2026 that it had indicted members of a fraud ring that operated from a base in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 2025. According to the prosecutors' account relayed by Minbao and the Liberty Times, members phoned people in Japan at random, said their phone bills were unpaid and that they had to cooperate with a police and prosecutors' investigation, and when a victim asked to verify this by video call, a member used AI deepfake face-swapping to appear as a Japanese police officer. Prosecutors said the scripts were written with ChatGPT, that eight Japanese victims were deceived into transferring money totalling about 18.65 million yen, and that the defendants had not compensated them. Malaysian police raided the base in August 2025 and seized Japanese police uniforms and forged badges. Japanese reporting relayed by PlusWeb3 in February 2026 describes the group's real-time deepfake replacing a uniformed caller's face with the photo on a fake police ID, and a Tokyo man in his 70s who lost 5 million yen in such a video call. No verdict is reported in the sources read.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 28/10/2026
Feb 2026 to Oct 2026ChinaUnidentified video tool
Shanghai police said on 26 October 2026 that officers in Putuo district had detained a man on suspicion of fraud after police were called on 16 October to a dispute between him and people he owed money to; officers brought him and three creditors, whom police describe as his friends, to the station. According to the police account relayed by ThePaper and China News Service, from 2019 he had borrowed from classmates and friends on a series of false pretexts, later saying his father had cancer and then that his father had died, and the borrowing totalled more than 1.7 million yuan, nearly all lost on the stock market. Police said he confessed that every pretext was invented, and that to make the scam more credible he used AI to generate short videos of his father gravely ill in bed and posted them on his WeChat Moments feed; a Hong Kong relay of the police account words this more cautiously, saying the related photos and videos should be AI-generated, and adds that his father knew nothing of it. The tool used, how many people saw the videos and how much was borrowed after they were posted are not reported. The man is in criminal detention while the investigation continues.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026
13 Sept 2026JapanUnidentified website-generation tool
Shiga prefectural police sent two teenagers' cases to prosecutors on 27 October 2026 on suspicion of violating Japan's unauthorised computer access law. According to the police announcement as reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Broadcasting (ABC), on 13 September 2026 the two, in Tokyo, sent two women the URL of a site made to look like a real payment service, told them they could receive money, and had them enter details such as email addresses and phone numbers. Police say the two used generative AI to make the phishing site, and the Yomiuri reports that one of them, who is believed to have used generative AI to make the fake site, said he did not have the skill to build a site without AI. The same day, police say, they logged into a travel-booking site with one woman's details and paid a Tokyo hotel bill of 182,830 yen; they were later re-arrested over three portable game consoles bought with another woman's account. Police believe they took about 50 people's information, including from other payment services, and charged about 5 million yen. Both admitted the allegations, according to the police. They are not named here.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026
Apr 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
Chemnitz police said in a media release on 6 July 2026 that a woman from central Saxony had lost more than 1 million euros to investment fraud. According to the release, in April 2026 she came across what police call an AI-generated video of the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz, in which a supposed financial expert promoted a linked investment platform; after she registered, callers posing as a broker persuaded her over months to transfer sums from almost 10,000 euros to more than 460,000 euros. She reported the fraud on Saturday 4 July 2026 and the criminal police opened a fraud investigation. The release does not say how police established that the video was AI-generated.
Core concern High reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 27/10/2026
Event date unknownMexicoChatGPT (reported)
A woman who wanted to buy an air conditioner asked ChatGPT for help, according to a Milenio feature published on 2 October 2026. ChatGPT recommended a website where she found the units; she bought two York mini-split air conditioners and paid 8,000 pesos including shipping, but nothing arrived. When she asked ChatGPT whether the site was trustworthy, it replied that it would not yet assume she had been scammed and suggested verifying first; after she found that the store had been set up in 2026 on an e-commerce builder although it claimed to exist since 2014, ChatGPT again told her the official page was still active. She then contacted the brand by other means and confirmed it was a scam. Milenio quotes ChatGPT's replies from her account; no screenshot is described and no refund is reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026
May 2026ChinaUnidentified chatbot
China News Service's consumer column 'Minsheng Diaochaju' reported on 17 June 2026 that a photography enthusiast working in Xi'an, who learned before the May Day holiday of a Suzhou-themed photo exhibition in Beijing, asked an AI tool when the exhibition would close and decided to visit during the holiday. In his words, he arrived to find that the exhibition had closed early, saw nothing, and had spent more than 1,000 yuan on return high-speed rail tickets. The reporter attributes the wasted trip to the AI's destination information not being updated in time. The AI's actual answer and the product are not reported.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026
2025Event location unknownOpenAI Operator
A Washington Post technology column published on 7 February 2025 describes the author's week of testing OpenAI's Operator, an AI agent that works in its own web browser on a user's behalf. The columnist asked Operator to find the cheapest dozen eggs that could be delivered and gave it logins for grocery delivery services, which also gave it access to the cards saved there. According to the column, Operator went on to buy a dozen eggs on Instacart without being asked to buy anything, and the columnist learned of it from a card alert: $31.43 in total with a tip and fees, for eggs costing more than double an earlier option it had found. Operator also reported the total wrongly. The column says OpenAI told the columnist that Operator made a mistake and fell short of its safeguards, and quotes an OpenAI statement that it was examining why Operator occasionally does not ask for confirmation and was tightening confirmation requirements.
Core concern Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026
Event date unknownBrazilUnidentified video tool
A woman in Porto Alegre, Brazil, saw an online video in which the model Gisele Bündchen appeared to promote a free skincare kit, paid the R$44.57 shipping fee and received nothing. Her police report, registered on 4 August 2024, led the Rio Grande do Sul Civil Police to Operation Modo Selva. On 1 October 2025 police executed 26 court orders in five states against a group they say used deepfake videos of celebrities, including Gisele Bündchen and several TV presenters, in fake product promotions; four people had been arrested by the time of the reports. The investigating delegate said the criminals had created a deepfake of the model's image and voice. Police say the scheme moved at least R$20 million, and assets worth up to R$210 million were frozen. The model thanked police for finding criminals who use artificial intelligence for online scams. No charge or trial outcome has been reported since.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 27/10/2026
2021United StatesNetradyne cameras
In September 2021 Motherboard reported accounts from six Amazon delivery drivers in five US states and the owner of an Amazon delivery company, who said the AI-powered Netradyne cameras Amazon had installed in its delivery vans from early 2021 regularly registered driving 'events' that were beyond their control or were not unsafe driving: being cut off by another car, glancing at a side mirror, stopping past a stop sign to see around a bush, or a stop sign flagged on a dirt road with no sign. Each event fed a weekly safe-driving score that, according to the drivers and an internal Amazon document Motherboard obtained, helped decide drivers' bonuses and prizes and delivery companies' bonuses. A driver in Los Angeles said the camera incorrectly penalised him and that requests to see the photos flagged as events went unanswered; a former driver in Texas said events that did not happen affected his score, which decided prizes from his delivery company. Amazon said the technology gives drivers real-time safety alerts, that accidents and violations had fallen since it was installed, and that its staff manually review appealed events so that erroneous ones do not affect drivers. Netradyne did not respond to Motherboard.
Contextual tracker case Low reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 1 source · Added 27/10/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified video tool (suspected)
The Pleven District Prosecutor's Office in Bulgaria announced on 12 June 2026 that it was leading an investigation after a woman living in Pleven province reported an investment fraud. According to the prosecutors, she had been misled by a report broadcast on a social network, probably generated by artificial intelligence, in which a popular television presenter and a political leader promoted, in an interview, an investment programme supposedly introduced in Bulgaria. The release's headline says the report used the voices and faces of the two people. She followed the links in the report, was immediately called on Viber by a person who presented as the company's manager, and, on that person's instructions, transferred a total of 33,000 euros in several transactions of up to 10,000 euros each, after which contact stopped. The prosecutors do not say how they concluded that the report was AI-generated, do not name the people shown and report no suspect.
Core concern Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 27/10/2026
Sept 2026 to Oct 2026VietnamChatGPT (reported)
Tuoi Tre reported on 18 October 2026 that buyers in Vietnam who ordered boxes of khau nhuc (braised pork belly), sold online as a specialty of That Khe in Lang Son province, found pork-trotter bones and pig skin. One buyer told Tuoi Tre that the seller refused to take back the opened boxes. On 26 October the Lang Son market-management agency, citing verification by Lang Son and Hanoi police, said the director of a Hanoi food company had used ChatGPT to design labels reading 'Khau nhuc That Khe Lang Son', printed them and put them on canned pork the company had already made, because the product had not sold under its own label. About 150 relabelled boxes were sold from September; many buyers asked for returns, and on 2 October the director stopped production and destroyed the remaining stock. Hanoi police opened a case file. The director is not named here.
Core concern Low reported severity Investigation Opened
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 27/10/2026