DeepfakeHigh
Ottawa Couple Reportedly Loses CA$177,023 After Purported Deepfake Elon Musk Investment Scam
- Occurred
- Oct 1, 2023
- Published
- Nov 19, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A retired Ottawa couple, Doug and Victoria Lloyd, lost CA$177,023 after being lured by a purported deepfake video of Elon Musk promoting a fake investment platform. The deepfake allegedly led to prolonged social engineering, remote access to their computer, and fraudulent cryptocurrency transfers. The couple reportedly suffered major financial loss and ongoing debt. Police say recovery is unlikely.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- Unknown scammer impersonating Elon Musk
- Scammers
Harmed parties
- Victoria Lloyd
- Investors
- General public of Canada
- General public
- Elon Musk
- Elderly investors
- Elderly individuals
- Doug Lloyd
- Canadian investors
- Epistemic integrity
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Deepfake video used in investment scam caused significant financial loss to victims.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8