A 77-year-old woman from Edinburgh has lost £17,000 due to being scammed by a romance fraudster. Nikki MacLeod was tricked into believing that she had fallen in love with someone online who turned out to be using deepfake videos to scam her. MacLeod initially sent Steam gift cards and then made bank and PayPal transfers in the belief that she was sending them to a real person with whom she was in a relationship. “I am not a stupid person but she was able to convince me that she was a real person and we were going to spend our lives together,” said MacLeod.
MacLeod was allegedly convinced by video messages and other documentation that the scammer, who identified herself as “Alla Morgan”, was a genuine person working on an oil rig in the North Sea. Despite her scepticism, MacLeod ended up parting with hundreds of pounds’ worth of gift cards before receiving recorded video messages from her supposed partner. “I had started to think, are you a real person?” said MacLeod.” Then she sent me a video to say ‘Hi Nikki, I am not a scammer, I am on my oil rig’ and I was totally convinced by it.”
The images and videos sent by the scammer were created using AI technology. While some of these “deepfake” video messages appeared genuine, MacLeod’s bank eventually informed her that she had fallen victim to fraud after she tried to make another payment to her partner. The bank has since recovered £7,000 of her money, but a further £10,000 remains unrecovered.
Deepfake videos are becoming an increasingly common tool in the arsenal of online fraudsters. The creation of deepfakes relies on AI technology that superimposes someone’s face onto an existing video to make it look real. AI deepfake technology can create seemingly realistic video messages, but cybersecurity experts note that there are often subtle indicators that show a video to be fake. These include eye movements, jawline accuracy, and jerky facial tics. Experts advise being cautious about video messages or requests for strange payments. Companies like Steam and PayPal have advised their users to be wary of unusual payment requests or uninvited approaches in case these are scams.
MacLeod has not yet been able to recover the personal payments she sent to the scammers through the friends and family function on PayPal. In a statement, a spokesman for PayPal expressed regret over MacLeod’s situation, adding that they “do not cover personal payments under PayPal Buyer Protection.”
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