Yahoo Boys scammers deploy real-time deepfakes in video call romance scams
Face-swapping deepfake software
Nigerian fraud rings reportedly adopted real-time face-swapping deepfakes during live video calls to impersonate attractive identities. Victims were manipulated into believing their romantic partners were real, leading to significant financial losses.
- first report
- 1 May 2022
- last update
- 1 May 2022
Timeline · 1
Sources · 1
Research and catalogues
- 2022-05-01Yahoo Boys Allegedly Employ Real-Time Deepfake Technology in Romance ScamsAI Incident Database · incidentdatabase.ai/cite/911
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 May 2022 · first reported 1 May 2022
- origin
- AI Incident DatabaseDerived from the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- record
- confidence 0.90 · 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
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the brief as text
# Yahoo Boys scammers deploy real-time deepfakes in video call romance scams https://gcdradar.vercel.app/incidents/yahoo-boys-scammers-deploy-real-time-deepfakes-in-video-call · AIR-2022-0037 · closed 2022-05-15 - Lane: Breaches & attacks - Severity: 4 (Confirmed real-world loss) - Fix status: No fix needed - First reported: 2022-05-01 - AI role: AI-enabled attack - Products: Face-swapping deepfake software ## Summary Nigerian fraud rings reportedly adopted real-time face-swapping deepfakes during live video calls to impersonate attractive identities. Victims were manipulated into believing their romantic partners were real, leading to significant financial losses. ## What to do No action recorded; read the sources below and the vendor's advisory. ## Latest updates - 2022-05-01: Yahoo Boys Allegedly Employ Real-Time Deepfake Technology in Romance Scams (https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/911) ## Sources - 2022-05-01 AI Incident Database: Yahoo Boys Allegedly Employ Real-Time Deepfake Technology in Romance Scams https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/911 Verify against the vendor's advisory before changing production. Data CC BY-SA 4.0, https://gcdradar.vercel.app.
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