GCD AI RADAR
incidents/AIR-2025-0166

AI-Assisted Romance Scam Defrauds Victim of NZ$375,000

AI-enabled attack4 Confirmed real-world lossDeepfake fraudAI phishing / social engineering

Scammers utilized AI-generated voice messages and deceptive texts to impersonate a celebrity over two years. The multi-year fraud resulted in a financial loss of NZ$375,000 for the victim.

Details

type
AI-enabled attack
Attackers used AI as a meaningful part of a cyberattack against someone else.
categories
  • Deepfake fraudprimary
    Synthetic voice, video or images used to impersonate people for fraud, extortion or access.
  • AI phishing / social engineering
    Phishing, lures and social engineering produced or personalised at scale with AI.
owasp llm top 10
no entry for these categories
mitre atlas
Both rows are derived from the type and categories (OWASP 2025 edition, ATLAS release 2026.09), not classified per record. How
severity
4 · Confirmed real-world loss
Financial loss, PHI/PII breach, safety impact or regulatory action.
targets
Individuals
products
AI voice generation tools
incident date
1 Feb 2025
first reported
1 Feb 2025
origin
AI Incident Database
Derived from the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0).
classifier confidence
0.90 · published at or above 0.80; see the methodology
tags
romance_scam · deepfake_voice · fraud
record
created 2026-10-18 06:33Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:59Z · json

Sources · 1

  1. 2025-02-01
    Purportedly AI-Assisted Impersonation of Martin Henderson in Romance Scam Leads to Reported NZ$375,000 Fraud
    AI Incident Database · incidentdatabase.ai/cite/938

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

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