An employee of a multinational company from Hong Kong was tricked into making several important bank transactions during a video conference… before realizing that he was the victim of an artificial intelligence scam, RTHK reported, citing news.ro.

An employee thought he was responding to a request from his boss during a video conference with other employees, but his company lost HK$200 million, equivalent to US$25 million. According to RTHK television, in fact, in addition to the unfortunate hero, the participants of the virtual meeting were created by artificial intelligence.

About fifteen operations

So it was a deep fraud. “During this multi-person video conference, it appeared that all the people except him were fake, but they seemed more genuine than they really were,” said Chan Shun-ching, chief superintendent. During the discussion, the employee was forced to make approximately fifteen transactions on fifteen different bank accounts.

Well thought out scam. According to the investigators, it was an extremely professional operation. Fraudsters would need months to obtain video recordings of company employees and use them to deceive their interlocutors. For this, they used artificial intelligence.

Once the ruse was developed, they sent an email invitation to the trapped employee, who unsuspectingly clicked on it. This is not the first such scam to hit the headlines: in 2019, the head of a British company owned by a German group sent €220,000 to Hungary after receiving a call from his boss.