JENA (dpa-AFX) - The European IT security provider Eset has warned that a current online scam campaign is using fake advertising videos to defraud unsuspecting consumers of their money. The videos give the impression that well-known personalities such as CDU chairman Friedrich Merz, SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp or TV experts from ARD are advertising revolutionary investment products with fabulous profit potential. The manipulated videos promised high profits with minimal investment.

According to Eset's research, the hackers use real news reports as the basis for their fake videos. The criminals, who presumably come from Russia or Ukraine, use this data to train the AI software to create a new post. The speakers in the deepfake videos advertise a dubious investment platform called Immediate Matrix.

Targeting consumers in Germany

According to Eset, the fake videos have been circulating since May. Currently, users in Germany are among the main target groups. Variants of the deepfakes were similarly targeted at consumers in other countries, including Canada, Japan, South Africa and the Netherlands.

"Politicians and other public figures are a real goldmine for AI fraudsters," said Eset researcher Ondrej Novotny, who was involved in the discovery of the campaign. "There is a wealth of images, videos and audio recordings of them that they can use to feed their AI tools. The result: a well-known person gives seemingly serious advice on how best to invest your money."

Eset issued an urgent warning against taking advantage of the supposedly lucrative investment opportunities. "If users fall for it and invest, their money is gone." In other countries where the campaign was active, victims were even called by the perpetrators to intimidate them and urge them to make higher investments.

How to recognize deepfakes

"The deepfakes in this campaign are often of poor quality and do not lip-sync correctly," said Eset expert Novotny. However, this does not deter fraudsters from using them because they only need a tiny fraction of the recipients who fall for the scam and transfer the requested sum. "It's easy money and requires little investment on the part of the criminals."/chd/DP/zb