Event date unknownBrazilAI voice cloning (tool not identified)
A businessman who owns a workshop in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, found a car advertised at a market price by a seller who said he was in Ponta Porã, the businessman's home town; he passed his brother's contact so the brother could inspect the car. The fraudsters then contacted him as if they were his brother, saying he had seen the car, sending a video and confirming everything was in order; believing he was speaking to his brother, he made a Pix transfer of about R$28,000, after which the contact was blocked. He told G1 MS and TV Morena that the criminals used information about his family and a cloned voice. Guided by his wife, he contested the transfer through the Central Bank's special return mechanism and, after nearly three hours, a police report and an in-person registration, recovered about 20 percent. In a second case reported alongside, a medical student's mother in Dourados received messages, a voice note and a video from someone posing as her daughter, in a cloned voice, approving payment for an HB20 she was buying in Campo Grande; the mother checked directly with her daughter and discovered the audio had been AI-generated before any money was sent. A state prosecutor said his unit had not yet catalogued identical voice-cloning cases and urged victims to file police reports; the Civil Police did not respond to G1's questions. The date of the fraud is not reported.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: alleged Medium reported severity Media Coverage
Added 21/09/2026
11 Aug 2026BrazilAI voice cloning (tool not identified)
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.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: alleged Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 20/09/2026
19 May 2026United StatesSuspected AI voice cloning of a mortgage loan officer, combined with a spoofed phone number and a look-alike email domain (tool not identified; attribution by the victims and CertifID)
A married couple in their sixties buying a US$460,000 condo in Hudsonville, near Grand Rapids, Michigan, received an email on 19 May 2026, days before closing, telling them to wire US$66,026.92 for the down payment and closing costs within 24 hours. The email listed a phone number differing from their loan officer's by two digits, and the husband then received a call confirming the instructions in a voice that sounded just like the loan officer. The couple borrowed from family and other sources and wired the money. The day before closing their real loan officer sent the actual statement; the closing was cancelled hours before signing and the money was gone. The husband now believes the call came from a spoofed number using AI-assisted voice cloning; Tyler Adams of CertifID, which is working with the couple and federal officials, said someone's email in the transaction was probably compromised and that the scammers likely cloned the loan officer's voice from social-media clips. The sender's address had two extra letters ('UnitedsMortgages' instead of 'UnitedMortgage'). Neither the lender nor the loan officer is accused of complicity. The couple later completed the purchase in early June from their mutual fund, reported the loss to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, and describe lasting apprehension and have discussed delaying retirement. CNN reported the case on 15 September 2026; the account the money went to has since closed.
Core concern News report AI involvement: suspected Causal attribution: alleged Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 20/09/2026
1 Aug 2026 to 16 Sept 2026KazakhstanDeepfake videos of public figures (Elon Musk, Pavel Durov, Mikhail Lomtadze, television news presenters) and fake 'AI' investment platforms ('Quantum AI', 'Kaspi AI'); generation tools not identified
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.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: supported Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 20/09/2026
2025ChinaAI video processing ('AI磨皮、场景合成': AI skin-smoothing and scene compositing) used to produce close to 7,000 short videos of a fabricated young 'doctor' persona; tools not identified
police, as presented by the Kankan News programme 案件聚焦 (Case Focus), reported in September 2026 that a Shanghai property-engineering contractor had transferred 170,000 yuan in total during a five-month online relationship with a woman he had met on a social platform in 2021. She presented herself as born in 1992, a doctor at a well-known top-tier hospital with hospital property-engineering projects to award, and ran an account with more than 10,000 followers and close to 7,000 short videos of daily life. She refused to meet or take a video call, saying her mother opposed the relationship and demanded a 300,000 yuan bride price and a Shanghai flat; the man reported to a police station when the promised projects never materialised and his savings ran down. Police found she was born in 1961, aged 65, had no medical qualification and had worked as a hospital cleaner; the receiving bank account was registered to another man; the videos were all made with AI skin-smoothing and scene compositing, some carrying a small 'this work contains AI-generated content' label he had never noticed; and she used multiple accounts to play both herself and her long-dead mother. The money had gone on cosmetic treatments and clothing; she had a 2009 fraud conviction with a sentence of four and a half years and is now under criminal coercive measures for suspected fraud. Police also said she kept ambiguous relationships with more than ten people; no other losses are reported.
Core concern News report AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported Medium reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 20/09/2026
Jul 2026GreeceAI voice-cloning tool (not identified by police)
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.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: supported Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
Added 19/09/2026
May 2026SingaporeDeepfake AI video and audio fabricating Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister Indranee Rajah and other officials in a Zoom conference (tools not identified)
In May 2026 the Singapore Police Force (SPF) reported that a man had lost at least S$4.9 million (about US$3.8 million) to a government-official impersonation scam. He received a WhatsApp message carrying the profile photo of Secretary to the Cabinet Wong Hong Kuan and an email from a proton.me address in that name, requesting urgent funding assistance for 'the situation in the Strait of Hormuz', with a fake 'letter of guarantee' bearing the Prime Minister's signature promising reimbursement within 15 business days; he signed a non-disclosure agreement and supplied a copy of his identity card. He was then invited to a Zoom video conference in which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister Indranee Rajah, Monetary Authority of Singapore representatives and foreign officials appeared; all were fabricated with deepfake AI, and the closing 'remarks' by the fake Prime Minister acknowledged the victim's attendance. Contacted afterwards on WhatsApp by a scammer posing as a lawyer, he transferred the money in a series of transactions to a corporate bank account, and realised the fraud only when he contacted the real cabinet secretary. On 16 May the police released footage of the fake conference, noting lips out of sync with speech, audio broadcast from a single account and a distorted background.
Core concern News report AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported High reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 18/09/2026
Event date unknownUnited KingdomAI-generated video impersonating a well-known financial personality (tool not identified; personality not named by police)
On 7 September 2026 the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said a person in the Ards and North Down area had lost £250,000 in what it called a 'sophisticated and substantial' investment fraud. The victim first saw what appeared to be an AI-generated online video featuring a well-known personality from the financial sector promoting an investment with significant returns. After investing a small amount the victim was contacted on WhatsApp and encouraged to pay more, persuaded to open multiple online accounts, to allow the fraudsters remote access to a computer 'to assist with the investment', to borrow money to keep investing, and finally to make further payments to 'release' funds supposedly held in the investment. The PSNI did not name the personality; BBC News NI noted that fabricated endorsements of financial experts such as Martin Lewis, Peter Jones and Steven Bartlett circulate online.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: supported High reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 18/09/2026
12 Jun 2026RussiaChatGPT (OpenAI)
On 12 June 2026 a Russian-speaking crypto investor, known by the alias Alex (@vesnuhin), asked ChatGPT in Russian where to swap sFLR for WFLR tokens. ChatGPT's reply included a link to sceptre.network, a phishing clone of the legitimate sceptre.fi. He connected his wallet and signed an unlimited-approval transaction; within seconds about 1.9 million FXRP, worth roughly $2.1 million (about 180 million rubles), were drained. A blockchain analyst traced the theft, and reported that the phishing link appeared only in Russian-language answers. Russia's Interior Ministry (MVD) later confirmed the loss.
Core concern News report AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: supported High reported severity Investigation Opened
Added 17/09/2026