From Forbes, October 14:
AI voice cloning is used in a huge heist in the U.A.E., according to Dubai investigators, amidst warnings about cybercriminal use of the new technology.
In early 2020, a bank manager in the United Arab Emirates received a call from a man whose voice he recognized—a director at a company with whom he’d spoken before. The director had good news: His company was about to make an acquisition, so he needed the bank to authorize some transfers to the tune of $35 million. A lawyer named Martin Zelner had been hired to coordinate the procedures and the bank manager could see in his inbox emails from the director and Zelner, confirming what money needed to move where. The bank manager, believing everything appeared legitimate, began making the transfers.
What he didn’t know was that he’d been duped as part of an elaborate swindle, one in which fraudsters had used “deep voice” technology to clone the director’s speech, according to a court document unearthed by Forbes in which the U.A.E. has sought American investigators’ help in tracing $400,000 of stolen funds that went into U.S.-based accounts held by Centennial Bank. The U.A.E. believes it was an elaborate scheme, involving at least 17 individuals, which sent the pilfered money to bank accounts across the globe.
Little more detail was given in the document, with none of the victims’ names provided. The Dubai Public Prosecution Office, which is leading the investigation, hadn’t responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. Martin Zelner, a U.S.-based lawyer, had also been contacted for comment, but had not responded at the time of publication.
It’s only the second known case of fraudsters allegedly using voice-shaping tools to carry out a heist, but appears to have been far more successful than the first, in which fraudsters used the tech to impersonate a CEO of a U.K.-based energy firm in an attempt to steal $240,000 in 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal....
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