Hong Kong employee tricked into paying out HK$4 million after video call with deepfake ‘CFO’ of UK multinational firm

A UK-based multinational company has fallen victim to a deepfake scam after a digitally recreated version of its chief financial officer fooled an employee at the firm’s Hong Kong branch and tricked her into transferring HK$4 million (US$511,968), the Post has learned.

The woman employee received a WhatsApp message on May 20 from a scammer impersonating the executive, requesting a “Zoom” video conference with her the next day, a source familiar with the case said on Thursday.

During the meeting on May 21, the “fake supervisor” told her to transfer around HK$4 million to several bank accounts, claiming that “it was for funding a new branch of the company”, according to the force.

“The employee seeing the familiar appearance and voice of the ‘fake supervisor’ during the video conference unsuspectingly followed the instructions and made multiple transfers of the money to designated bank accounts [on the same day]”, police said on their CyberDefender Facebook page.

The woman realised it was a scam when she made a verification. She then reported it to police.

Fraudsters seemed to have combined “publicly available footage” of the company’s CFO with sophisticated deepfake technology to create his voice and image during the video conference, according to police.

The insider said it was the second deepfake scam reported in Hong Kong.

London-based design and engineering firm Arup lost HK$200 million after an employee at its Hong Kong office was fooled by a digitally recreated version of the firm’s chief financial officer in January.