A bank manager in the United Arab Emirates was conned into authorizing a $35 million transfer after receiving vocal confirmation from a bank account holder. There was just one problem: the caller wasn’t really the account holder. The manager of the undisclosed bank received the call from a long-time client, who was excited about making an important acquisition. The manager had talked to the client many, many times and was very familiar with his voice, which is why the scam worked so easily. The person the manager had talked to on the phone had employed an AI-powered “deepvoice” technology to clone the bank client’s voice and make it possible for anyone to tell it apart from the original. Not much info has been revealed in this case, apart from the fact that U.A.E. authorities believe that the elaborate scheme involved at least 17 people and that the money was sent to accounts all over the world, to make it difficult to track down and recover. It’s only the second known case of a bank heist involving deepvoice technology, with the first occurring in 2019, but cybercrime experts warn that this is only the beginning.
