gcdRadar
closedclosed 15 Oct 2023Breaches & attacks4 Confirmed real-world lossAI

Ottawa retirees lose CA$177,000 to Elon Musk deepfake investment scam

Fraudsters deployed an AI-generated video of Elon Musk to bait an Ontario couple into a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme. The attackers subsequently obtained remote computer access and drained CA$177,023 through unauthorized transfers.

first report
1 Oct 2023
last update
1 Oct 2023

Timeline · 1

  1. 1 Oct 2023Ottawa Couple Reportedly Loses CA$177,023 After Purported Deepfake Elon Musk Investment Scam

Sources · 1

Research and catalogues

  1. 2023-10-01

Titles and links belong to their publishers. The summary above is written by gcdRadar in its own words; data is CC BY-SA 4.0.

Classification

AI role
AI-enabled attack
categories
Deepfake fraudAI phishing / social engineering
severity
4 · Confirmed real-world loss
targets
Individuals
owasp llm top 10
no entry for these categories
dates
happened 1 Oct 2023 · first reported 1 Oct 2023
origin
AI Incident Database
Derived from the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0).
record
confidence 0.95 · created 2026-10-18 06:33Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:59Z

Lane, AI role, categories and severity come from the classifier; the OWASP and ATLAS rows are derived from the categories. How these are assigned

Copy a brief

This record as a short Markdown brief, for a ticket, a chat or a coding agent.

the brief as text
# Ottawa retirees lose CA$177,000 to Elon Musk deepfake investment scam

https://gcdradar.vercel.app/incidents/ottawa-retirees-lose-ca-177-000-to-elon-musk-deepfake-invest · AIR-2023-0034 · closed 2023-10-15

- Lane: Breaches & attacks
- Severity: 4 (Confirmed real-world loss)
- Fix status: No fix needed
- First reported: 2023-10-01
- AI role: AI-enabled attack

## Summary

Fraudsters deployed an AI-generated video of Elon Musk to bait an Ontario couple into a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme. The attackers subsequently obtained remote computer access and drained CA$177,023 through unauthorized transfers.

## What to do

No action recorded; read the sources below and the vendor's advisory.

## Latest updates

- 2023-10-01: Ottawa Couple Reportedly Loses CA$177,023 After Purported Deepfake Elon Musk Investment Scam (https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1276)

## Sources

- 2023-10-01 AI Incident Database: Ottawa Couple Reportedly Loses CA$177,023 After Purported Deepfake Elon Musk Investment Scam https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1276

Verify against the vendor's advisory before changing production. Data CC BY-SA 4.0, https://gcdradar.vercel.app.

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