The Sir Jack Files #2: The Case of the Faces That Weren’t There
An Arup employee joined a video call with the finance chief and colleagues. Every face was a deepfake, and US$25.6 million was gone. How it worked, and the human checks that stop it.
An Arup employee joined a video call with the finance chief and colleagues. Every face was a deepfake, and US$25.6 million was gone. How it worked, and the human checks that stop it.
· AI voice, from Fortune / Arup statement (May 2024), World Economic Forum (Rob Greig, Arup), Construction Briefing
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs.
What the video says
Case two. A video call. Every face on the screen belonged to someone you knew. None of them were real.
Hong Kong, January twenty twenty-four. An employee at the engineering firm Arup gets an email from the company's chief financial officer. A secret transaction. The employee suspects phishing.
So the fraudsters send an invitation. A video call with the bosses. On the screen, the finance chief and other colleagues. Familiar faces, familiar voices.
Every one of them a deepfake. Fifteen transfers. Five bank accounts. Two hundred million Hong Kong dollars, about twenty-five million US.
The truth only surfaced when the employee checked with head office. No systems were hacked. Arup's own technology chief called it technology-enhanced social engineering. The target wasn't the computer.
It was trust. So what stops a perfect fake? Call back on a number you already know. Ask something only the real person would know.
And when you hear secret and urgent, slow down. A machine can fake a face. It can't fake the people who actually know you. Case closed.
Sources
Scenes drawn in code by AI Broadsheet. Narration, sound effects and music generated with ElevenLabs. Report a mistake