GCD AI RADAR
incidents/AIR-2026-0422

Scammers Use AI Deepfakes of Church Leaders to Solicit Fraudulent Donations

AI-enabled attack3 Confirmed exploitationDeepfake fraudAI phishing / social engineering

Scammers distributed synthetic video and cloned audio impersonating prominent religious leaders across social media and messaging platforms. The fraudulent posts solicited financial donations and spread unauthorized messages to unsuspecting community members.

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
3 · Confirmed exploitation
Used against real targets; limited or unclear impact.
targets
Individuals
incident date
5 Jan 2026
first reported
5 Jan 2026
origin
AI Incident Database
Derived from the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0).
classifier confidence
0.92 · published at or above 0.80; see the methodology
tags
deepfake · voice-cloning · impersonation · social-engineering
record
created 2026-10-18 06:33Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:59Z · json

Sources · 1

  1. 2026-01-05
    Reported AI Impersonations of Pastors Used in Online Donation and Influence Scams
    AI Incident Database · incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1355

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.

Related incidents