Patrick Hillmann, Chief Communications Officer at Binance, has been at the heart of a “deep fake” based scam. The criminals were able to create a deep fake of Patrick from his old news interviews and TV appearances. Then, they targeted unsuspecting crypto projects into a video call and lured them with Binance listings, for an upfront fee, of course. The Register reports that Hillmann only noticed when project teams thanked him for meetings he never attended, and one project manager asked him to confirm the Zoom call (“That wasn’t me”). Malwarebytes is sceptical of the “hologram” label and points out that no footage of the fakes has surfaced, so nobody outside those calls can judge how good the deep fake really was. Their tip for the next suspicious video call: ask the caller to turn their head sideways, a view current deep fakes still render poorly. One comment from Patrick stands out.
Other than the 15 pounds that I gained during COVID being noticeably absent, this deep fake was refined enough […]