Sammy Leung receives deepfake video call from 'Sandra Ng' claiming she was trafficked to Cambodia

Hong Kong actress-director Sandra Ng trafficked to Cambodia? Would anyone really fall for it? 

The lack of believability didn’t stop an apparent scammer from video-calling actor Sammy Leung and pretending.

In an Instagram Reel posted on Dec 29, Sammy shared the recording of a bizarre conversation with 'Sandra', wondering why she would be calling him.

The video call shows either a deepfake or a person using a face filter, with 'Sandra's' mouth moving erratically. The person in the video also speaks with Mandarin-accented Cantonese despite the real actress, 59, being a native speaker.

'Sandra' says in the call that she was "sold" to Cambodia by a director and asks if Sammy, 51, could lend her HK$5,000 (S$870) to take a boat back to Hong Kong. She even said that she has sent Sammy an account number to transfer funds.

"Which director?" Sammy retorts. "Are you filming Romance at KK Park?"

KK Park is a compound in Myawaddy, Myanmar, that is the location of several fraud factories where human trafficking and cybercrime take place.

Sammy clearly didn't fall for the scam, and joked about it on Instagram, tagging the real Sandra and asking her if she needed rescuing from Cambodia.

"Deepfakes look quite real nowadays," he wrote in his caption. "There's a chance I could mistake it for the real Sandra just going by the looks. Except for the accent, it really looked 60 to 70 per cent like Sandra."

Sammy warned that there were more and more fraud calls nowadays and people need to find ways to not fall for deepfake scams.

He also asked the public to "be smarter" when dealing with such calls.

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drimac@asiaone.com

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