An Ontario senior lost $900,000 in a crypto scam that used an AI deepfake of Mark Carney
A video on Facebook made it look like the prime minister was promoting a cryptocurrency investment platform
An 86-year-old Sault Ste. Marie woman says she lost more than $900,000 through cryptocurrency investments that turned out to be a scam.
Judy Skene told CTV News that last summer, she saw a video on social media of Prime Minister Mark Carney promoting a cryptocurrency investment platform, and assumed it must be trustworthy.
“I saw an ad on Facebook of Mark Carney telling me if I invested $350 Canadian, it would be backed by the Bank of Canada,” Skene said. Shortly after that, someone called her and claimed the investment had already tripled in value. She decided to keep investing.
“I agreed to put a mortgage of $300,000 on my condominium,” she said. “Once I did the final payment, there was no more conversation and all my money was gone.” A fake investment account made it appear as though her money had doubled, when in reality she’d been defrauded $900,000, according to CTV. That video of Prime Minister Carney wasn’t actually him promoting crypto investments—it was a deepfake, a form of artificial intelligence used, often maliciously, to convincingly create hoax images, videos and sounds.
A GoFundMe has been launched to help Skene recover funds.
Mohit Rajhans, an AI expert and media consultant, told CTV News that social media platforms should be held accountable when users fall victim to scams because of content like the deepfake Skene saw on Facebook.
“Let’s remember they are making money off of these scams. These ads are running on social media platforms; this is a revenue stream for these apps,” he said.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
