Latest
  1. Johns Hopkins Bayview tells 3,182 patients an employee put their health data into a public AI tool
  2. China’s AI compute access expected to double in 2027, with US-designed chips about 65 per cent
  3. UK commits £100m to national AI Biosecurity Lab
  4. Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3.1 Pro with 1-million-token context window
  5. Residents in Newport and Cardiff oppose hyperscale datacentres near homes
  6. Study: Grok 4.7 picked Republicans in 92% of forced midterm answers, GPT-6.1 Sol picked Democrats in 97%
  7. Attackers exploiting the PHP flaws hand the break-in to AI agents, Unit 42 says
  8. Elvis Presley’s rightsholders sue Anthropic over training on 274 songs

Latest / Finance

IncidentFinanceMediaHong Kong UKReported

Arup named as victim of HK$200m deepfake video-call fraud in Hong Kong

See how this story connects

Source: South China Morning PostAlso reported by CNN

Engineering firm Arup confirmed on 17 May 2024 that it was the company behind a deepfake fraud Hong Kong police had described in February. An employee in its Hong Kong office joined a video call with a digitally recreated chief financial officer and other fake colleagues, then made 15 transfers totalling HK$200m (about US$25.6m) to five bank accounts in January. Arup said fake voices and images were used and its internal systems were not compromised.

Why it matters

Finance teams and banks saw that a live deepfake video call with familiar faces could get staff to approve large transfers without other checks.

When
17 May 2024
ID
WTA-N-2024-0099
Who
Arup, Hong Kong Police Force
System
Deepfake video call
Operator
Unknown fraudsters
Type
fraud
Status
under investigation; disclosed by Arup; Hong Kong Police · Incident ledger

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from South China Morning Post and the reporting credited above. We could not open the primary document, so it is marked Reported. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at South China Morning Post

Source copy: download the page text as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Cite this story

WTA-N-2024-0099: “Arup named as victim of HK$200m deepfake video-call fraud in Hong Kong.” wheresthe.ai, 17 May 2024. https://wheresthe.ai/d/hk-arup-deepfake-cfo-video-fraud-2024-05/ (source: South China Morning Post).

Spotted an error? Email [email protected].