Fraudsters used AI to create deepfake videos of financial experts to conduct pump and dump investment scams on social media, defrauding over 5,000 Swedish investors of half a billion kronor.
In 2024, fraudsters conducted large-scale pump and dump investment scams targeting Swedish investors through social media platforms, particularly Facebook. The scammers used AI technology to create deepfake videos featuring well-known financial experts including investor Gunter Marder and journalist Gabriel Mellqvist. These AI-generated videos showed the experts appearing to give investment advice in familiar settings like newsrooms and podcast studios. The fraudsters created fake profiles and WhatsApp groups where they promoted specific stocks, claiming the investments were safe and promising high returns for initial investments of a few thousand kronor. After collecting enough investors, the scammers would encourage additional purchases before dumping their own shares, causing stock prices to crash by up to 95% within minutes. Over 5,000 Swedish small investors lost a total of half a billion kronor (approximately 500 million SEK) through these schemes. The targeted financial experts reported receiving 30-40 fake advertisements featuring their likenesses and spent significant time trying to address the fraudulent use of their identities. The incident highlights concerns about Meta's failure to adequately police fake content on its platforms.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to gain a personal advantage over others such as through cheating, fraud, scams, blackmail or targeted manipulation of beliefs or behavior. Examples include AI-facilitated plagiarism for research or education, impersonating a trusted or fake individual for illegitimate financial benefit, or creating humiliating or sexual imagery.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed