AI-Powered CEO Impersonation Scheme Nets Three Indictments and $129 Million in Alleged Fraud
Three people have been indicted in New York on charges of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering after allegedly running an AI-assisted fraud operation that targeted thousands of companies and attempted to steal around $129 million.
Jacob Soall (41), Sharon Hazan (54), and Guy Sheetrit (42) are accused of spending roughly eighteen months working their way through corporate victims across multiple continents. Their targets included hospital systems in Missouri and California, a Rhode Island bank, a UK fintech, a Massachusetts mutual fund company, and a Florida pet food business. Quite the portfolio.
The scheme was straightforward in concept, if technically ambitious in execution. The group would contact a company's accounting department via email, posing as the CEO requesting help with a confidential financial transaction. When that wasn't enough, they escalated to phone or video calls where AI tools were used to mimic the voice and sometimes the face of the executive in question. Victims were then directed to contact a lawyer at a prominent law firm, who the trio was also ready to impersonate on demand.
Soall apparently specialised in playing British solicitors and was found with a handwritten script labelled 'Lawyer Call' to help him stay in character. Once the fictional attorney had the victim's trust, the instruction was simple: wire money to specified bank accounts. The funds were then converted into cryptocurrency to obscure the trail before being split among the group.
The defendants are based across Spain, the UK, Israel, and the UAE. Their nicknames, Rocky Balboa, Superman Cash, and Fat Boy, suggest a certain self-regard. Hazan has previous form, having been convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in New York back in 2008.
All three were arrested between June and September. If convicted on the wire fraud and money laundering charges, each faces up to 20 years per count. The aggravated identity theft charge carries a mandatory two-year sentence.
The FBI noted, with the kind of carefully worded understatement you'd expect from a press release, that the case illustrates how emerging technology is being used to commit large-scale fraud. That's one way to put it. Another way is that deepfake voices and AI-generated video are now standard tools in the financial crime toolkit, and corporate accounting teams are on the front line whether they know it or not.