You will be able to describe two widely reported deepfake scams and the pattern they share.
Imagine you work in a company's finance team and an email arrives from the chief financial officer about a confidential transaction. You're suspicious, as you've been trained to be. Then you're invited to a video call, and the CFO is there on screen with several colleagues you recognise, all of them talking and nodding as the instructions are given. It would take an unusual person to keep doubting after that.
That's roughly what happened in the most widely reported deepfake fraud so far. This lesson looks at two kinds of real case, one aimed at a company and one aimed at the public, and the pattern they share.
In early 2024, Hong Kong police described a case in which an employee in the Hong Kong office of a multinational firm was tricked into transferring about HK$200 million, roughly US$25 million, after a video call with people who appeared to be senior colleagues. Arup, the British engineering firm, later confirmed that it was the company involved.
According to the reports, the employee first received a message that seemed to come from the company's UK-based chief financial officer, about a secret transaction, and had doubts about it. So the scammers set up a video conference in which the CFO and other staff appeared and spoke. They were deepfakes, generated from publicly available video and audio of the real people. Reassured, the employee made a series of transfers to several bank accounts. The fraud was discovered only when the employee later checked with the company's head office.
Notice what failed and what didn't. The employee's first instinct, suspicion of an unusual email, was right. The video call is what overcame it. Seeing familiar faces felt like proof, and it wasn't. The step that eventually exposed the fraud, contacting head office directly, was the one that would have stopped it had it come first.
The second kind of case is aimed at the public. Singapore's leaders and government agencies have repeatedly warned about deepfake videos that use the faces and voices of national leaders to promote investment schemes and cryptocurrency platforms.
In late 2023, Lee Hsien Loong, then Prime Minister, publicly warned about deepfake videos of him circulating online promoting an investment scam, and urged people not to respond. Similar warnings have since been issued about deepfakes of other leaders. The videos typically show a leader appearing to endorse a platform that promises guaranteed returns, often styled as a news interview, and link to a site that collects personal details or deposits.
These videos rely on the trust people place in a familiar public figure. Someone who would never trust an anonymous advert might pause for a clip of a leader they've watched on television for years. The government's advice has been consistent: leaders don't endorse investment products, and any such video should be treated as a scam. Scam-proof your money covers how fake investment platforms work and how to check a firm with MAS, in lesson 4.3, Fake celebrity ads, insider groups and trading mentors.
Put the two cases side by side. One targeted a trained employee inside a large company. The other targets anyone scrolling social media. But the mechanics are the same, and they're the levers from Scam-proof your money, lesson 1.1, Every scam is built from the same four levers.
Authority comes first: a CFO, a Prime Minister, someone whose instructions or recommendations you'd normally follow. Urgency comes next: a confidential deal that must close today, an investment opportunity open for a limited time. The new part is how the request arrives, because the familiar face and voice remove the doubt that would normally slow you down, so the old levers work better.
The practical conclusion is uncomfortable but simple. Seeing and hearing someone is no longer reliable evidence that it's them. That's true on a phone call, a voice note, a recorded video and now a live video call.
So verification has to come from a different channel, one the person contacting you doesn't control. The Arup employee would have been protected by calling the CFO on a number from the company directory, or walking over to a manager and asking. Someone seeing a leader endorse an investment is protected by going to official sources, such as the government's own channels or the MAS website, rather than following the link in the video.
Lesson 5.3, Safe words, callbacks and questions only they can answer, turns that principle into habits you can use at home and at work.
Before you get there, go back through both cases once more. In each one, look for the moments when something felt slightly off, and the point where a single check would have ended the scam.
Write the warning signs in each case that could have prompted a check, and one step that would have stopped the loss.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).