US prosecutors charge three men with using AI to pose as chief executives and lawyers in a scheme they say took about $129m from companies
Prosecutors in New York say the group copied executives' voices, and sometimes their images, on calls that led to wire transfers. All three await extradition.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged three men accused of using AI to impersonate company executives and lawyers and to steal about $129m from companies, CBS News and the Associated Press report. The men are Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan and Guy Sheetrit. The charges include wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
According to the AP, the scheme began with an email to a company's accounting department, written as if from the chief executive, asking for a confidential transaction. Then came a phone or video call on which AI copied the executive's voice and sometimes his image. Staff were then passed to a fake lawyer at a big law firm, who ordered the wire transfers, and the money was turned into cryptocurrency. The victims named include hospital systems in Missouri and California, a Rhode Island bank, a UK fintech, a Massachusetts mutual-fund company and a Florida pet-food company.
Soall and Hazan were arrested in Spain and Sheetrit in the UK between June and September, and extradition requests are pending, CBS reports. These are charges, not convictions. The Justice Department's own release would not load on two tries, so the figures here are given through two outlets.
Voice and video cloning has turned the old fake-CEO email into a live call, which makes a call-back check on any urgent payment request more important. The story is in the catch-up lane: prosecutors announced the charges on Thursday 5 November.
- Reported Three men are accused of using AI to impersonate executives and lawyers to steal about $129m from companies, CBS News reports. CBS News
- Reported AI copied chief executives' voices and sometimes their images on calls, and victims were passed to a fake lawyer who ordered wire transfers, the Associated Press reports. Associated Press, via PBS NewsHour
- Reported Two of the men were arrested in Spain and one in the UK, and extradition requests are pending, CBS News reports. CBS News
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