A woman sits in a chair. A man with a large machete on one side, and another with a gun to her head on the other. Her mouth is duct-tapped and she looks into the camera teary-eyed – seemingly begging for help with her eyes.
David Maimon, Head of Fraud Insights for Sentilink, posted a deepfake video that depicts just that, with a warning.
“Online fraudsters are offering tutorials on creating deepfake videos, like the one below, to facilitate extortion and ransom scams”.
DeepFake As A Service Emerging For Extortion Scams
Even though Deepfake and AI tools are plentiful online, creating realistic ones can still be challenging. For those scammers that lack technical skills, channels and experts are emerging on Telegram to create those videos for them.
The video which pictures the woman with duct tape over her mouth is apparently used as proof that can be sent to a family member or loved one to perpetrate a ransom or kidnapping scam.
Fraud experts expect that deepfake videos like this will be used in scams to send to a family member or loved one to extort them for bitcoin. They will threaten to kill the person unless the bitcoin is sent immediately.
Deepfakes such as this will be used to terrorize people across the world.
