DeepfakeHigh
Reported Deepfake Video Impersonating Mark Carney Used in Nearly $1M Cryptocurrency Scam Targeting Ontario Senior
- Occurred
- Jul 1, 2025
- Published
- Jun 3, 2026
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
An Ontario retiree, Judy Skene, reportedly lost nearly $1 million after a Facebook ad featuring an alleged AI-generated deepfake video of Prime Minister Mark Carney drew her into a cryptocurrency investment scam. Reports said scammers later persuaded her to liquidate retirement funds, mortgage her condo, and take a credit-card cash advance.
Developers
- Synthetic media generation technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic video generation technology developers
Deployers
- Scammers impersonating Mark Carney
- Scammers
- Cryptocurrency scammers
Harmed parties
- Targets of scams
- Targets of scammers in Canada
- Mark Carney
- Judy Skene
- Investors
- Epistemic integrity
- Elderly investors
- Elderly individuals
- Cryptocurrency investors
- Elderly individuals in Canada
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Deepfake video impersonating public figure used in financial scam causing significant monetary loss.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8