Beware! Ludhiana residents falling prey to deepfake videos

Tribune News Service

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Ludhiana, February 20

After deepfake videos of renowned businessmen, film stars and sportspersons went viral in which fraudsters are seen luring unsuspecting individuals into online scams, the trend of this cyber fraud has now spread its wings in the industrial hub. Cyber crooks have targeted many people of Ludhiana in the past weeks and duped them of several lakhs on the pretext of giving huge returns on investment.

People even lose over Rs 50 lakh

Complaints being investigated by the cyber wing show that gullible people of the industrial hub have lost lakhs of rupees to online fraudsters. There are cases in which people even lost more than Rs 50 lakh to the cyber crooks as they fell prey to deceptive videos.

As complaints have been pouring in with the cyber crime unit of the Police Commissionerate, the police have started an awareness drive on social media to caution people about the prevalent trend so that people should not lose their hard-earned money.

In-charge, Cyber Crime, Inspector Jatinder Singh, said several complaints pertaining to deepfake scams were received by the cyber wing in which people lost lakhs of rupees to cyber crooks. During preliminary investigation in the complaints, it was found that people were lured by showing them deepfake videos of some celebrities or business tycoons and assuring multiple returns on investment. Investment plans were related to share markets, some renowned companies, firms or related to some business models. Since a layman cannot easily identify a video generated with artificial intelligence (AI), he or she easily falls prey to the fraudsters and deposit money expecting multiple returns.

Cyber crooks after getting money transferred into their bank accounts would time to time also show huge returns on the investment virtually and sometimes fraudsters would even return some money back into the accounts of people to make them believe that they have invested on some credible platform.

“The cyber criminals have also created their fake apps or websites to showcase to the people that they are on a right platform. Some even created fake Initial Public Offering (IPO) and also give minor returns to the investors to win their trust. They have been advertising on social networking sites by creating deepfake videos of Bollywood stars, sportspersons or business magnates and gullible people are easily falling prey to such fraudsters and loosing their life savings,” Inspector Jatinder said.

He said the fraudsters had been either using bank accounts of some migrants or some accounts opened on fake names in which they receive money from people. People should avoid such investments and on being cheated, they must lodge immediate complaints at toll free number 1930.

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#cyber crime #Deepfake #Social Media