She appeared to be a beautiful woman, and for men across Asia, their video calls confirmed what they believed to be true love. However, Hong Kong police revealed that these men had fallen victim to an elaborate romance scam powered by deepfake artificial intelligence, resulting in over $46 million in losses.
At a press conference on Monday, Hong Kong authorities announced the arrest of more than two dozen individuals allegedly involved in the scam. The group targeted victims from Taiwan to Singapore and as far as India. According to the police, 21 men and six women were charged with conspiracy to defraud, following a raid on a 4,000-square-foot facility in the city’s Hung Hom district, where the gang operated.
The suspects, aged 21 to 34, were mostly well-educated, with many holding degrees in digital media and technology. Recruited from local universities, these individuals allegedly collaborated with international IT specialists to build a fake cryptocurrency platform, where they persuaded their victims to invest.
Deepfake technology, which uses AI to create hyper-realistic fake video and audio content, played a pivotal role in the scam. This emerging technology has become a tool for scammers and bad actors who aim to spread disinformation and perpetrate online fraud. The romance scam in Hong Kong utilized deepfakes to deceive victims into thinking they were speaking with real people during video calls.
The scam falls under the category of “pig-butchering” schemes, where scammers spend months building trust with their targets before coercing them into bogus investments. While typically run by Chinese gangs in Southeast Asia, the extent of this operation in Hong Kong remains unclear, though authorities have long worked to raise awareness of telephone scams, especially targeting elderly victims.
Deepfake technology has raised new challenges for law enforcement. Earlier this year, a British multinational design and engineering company in Hong Kong lost $25 million after scammers used deepfake techniques to impersonate senior company officials.
In the romance scam, the initial contact began with a text message from someone posing as an attractive woman who claimed to have mistakenly added the wrong number. The scammers would then initiate a relationship, creating a sense of intimacy and planning a future with their victims.
Police described the operation as highly organized, with departments assigned to different stages of the scam. The group even used a training manual to guide members on manipulating their targets emotionally and financially. The manual outlined steps such as tailoring a persona to match the victim’s worldview, inventing personal difficulties to build trust, and ultimately painting an idealized future to persuade the victim to invest.
The scam had been running for about a year before police received intelligence about it in August. During the raid, authorities recovered more than 100 cell phones, nearly $26,000 in cash, and several luxury watches.