She was, supposedly, a beautiful woman, and in the minds of men all over Asia, video calls with her confirmed that their love was real.

However, in the end, they appeared to have fallen for a deepfake video created with the help of artificial intelligence, resulting in them losing quite a bit of money, according to Hong Kong police, CnN reports

At a press conference on Monday, Hong Kong police announced the arrest of more than 12 members of the ring, which they say targeted men from Taiwan to Singapore and as far away as India. The gang got rid of his victims altogether 46 million dollars.

Many men have fallen victim to this “love” scam, developing feelings for a beautiful woman who, although otherwise perfect, was fake. But how could they not believe she was real when they were chatting with her via video call and seeing her in the flesh?

The circuit behind the lovers scam

The police announced that the 21 men and six women are in custody on charges including conspiracy to defraud, following a raid on the gang’s operations center in a 1,219 sq m industrial unit. in the Hung Hom area of ​​the city.

the suspects, aged 21 to 34, they were mostly well educated, with many of them being digital media and technology graduates who were allegedly recruited by the gang after completing their studies at local universities, police said. The suspects allegedly worked with IT experts abroad to build a fake cryptocurrency platformwhere victims were forced to make investments, police added.

Deepfakes are highly realistic fake videos, with audio and other content created with the help of AI. The technology is increasingly being adopted by a variety of bad actors, from people looking to spread persuasive misinformation to online fraudsters.

How they “juiced” the lovers

According to Hong Kong police, the “romance” gang’s deepfake scam usually started with a message in which the sender, who was an attractive woman, said she had put the number in contacts by mistake.

The crooks then farmed online romances with their victims, creating a sense of intimacy until they began to plan a future together.

The team was highly organized, divided into departments responsible for different stages of fraudpolice said. They even used a training manual to teach members how to run the scam by exploiting the victim’s “honesty and emotion,” said police, who posted parts of the manual on Facebook.

Among the steps to falling in love with the victim were learning their worldview, inventing past difficulties such as failed relationships or failed businesses to “build trust and connection with the other person” and finally, creating a “beautiful vision ” which included travel plans together, which prompted the victim to invest.

The scam lasted for about a year, before police received information about it in August.

More than 100 mobile phones, equivalent to nearly $26,000 in cash and several luxury watches were found in the raid, according to police.