WhatsApp scam costs Hong Kong man $1.27 million after criminals used AI voice notes to impersonate his father — experts say secret codewords are the best way to stay safe
- Scammers stole $1.27m from a Hong Kong man after tricking him with AI
- The scheme impersonated his father using AI deepfake tech
- Experts say using a secret codeword can thwart the fraudsters
A Hong Kong man was recently conned out of HK$10 million ($1.27 million) by scammers who used artificial intelligence (AI) on WhatsApp to impersonate his father and request the payments, highlighting the dangers of trusting increasingly realistic AI tools. Yet experts say there’s a simple trick that can save you from suffering a similar fate.
According to the Hong Kong police’s Cyberdefender platform (via the South China Morning Post), the fraudsters sent a WhatsApp voice message to the victim saying they urgently needed a transfer of HK$1 million ($127,000).
This was convincing to the target, the SCMP reported, because the “voice and manner of speech [of the message] matched his father’s.” The victim was repeatedly exploited this...
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