In August, Patrick Hillman, chief communications officer of blockchain ecosystem Binance, knew something was off when he was scrolling through his full inbox and found six messages from clients about recent video calls with investors in which he had allegedly participated. “Thanks for the investment opportunity,” one of them said. “I have some concerns about your investment advice,” another wrote. Others complained the video quality wasn’t very good, and one even asked outright: “Can you confirm the Zoom call we had on Thursday was you?”
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Hillman realized that someone had deepfaked his image and voice well enough to hold 20-minute “investment” Zoom calls trying to convince his company’s clients to turn over their Bitcoin for scammy investments. “The clients I was able to connect with shared with me links to faked LinkedIn and Telegram profiles claiming to be me inviting them to various meetings to talk about different listing opportunities. Then the criminals used a convincing-looking holograph of me in Zoom calls to try and scam several representatives of legitimate cryptocurrency projects,” he says.
As the world’s largest crypto exchange with $25 billion in volume at the time of this writing, Binance deals with its share of fake investment frauds that try to capitalize on its brand and steal people’s crypto. “This was a first for us,” Hillman says. “I see it as a…