Singaporean man refuses to pay hacker $8,000, finds his photos used in deepfake porn video

After picking up a call from an unknown overseas number by accident, a Singaporean man named Owen was horrified to find himself in a porn video — a deepfake one, that is.

Refusing to give in to a hacker's demands of $8,000, the 20-year-old wrote in his police report that the latter sent the video to the contacts on his mobile phone. 

The deepfake clip, which was created using machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate the one's likeness, was sent to one of Owen's acquaintance Ednes Lee on April 21. 

In a now-deleted Facebook post shared by Lee on the same day, she described her disgust after receiving the video of Owen's likeness engaging in sexual acts. She also believed in the hacker's allegations that he had engaged sexual services without paying for them.

Lee said: "BRB (Be right back), time to go wash my eyes. The person literally sent me the whole damn video to see if I recognise him. Oh dear god." 

[embed]https://www.facebook.com/ednesleeyeon/posts/554023142734247[/embed]

Hours after she put up the Facebook post, Owen found out that the videos were leaked and contacted Lee to share his side of the story.

Taking to Facebook on April 22, Lee wrote: "I was later contacted by Owen on Telegram, and that's when I got to know of the sickening truth."

Owen told her that he had picked up a phone call from an unknown number based in the UK.

"I was sleeping. I never open eye [sic] then I answered already… I thought it's my manager calling me," Owen explained to Lee.

But that few seconds was enough for the hacker to gain access to Owen's phone, he claimed. 

They then used his likeness from the stolen media files to superimpose his face onto someone in a porn video.

Owen then received a message from a person named Lori, who claimed that he belonged to a professional organisation and "only wanted" money.

Lori then threatened to leak the "interesting" footage to humiliate Owen.

Advising Owen not to call the police, Lori wrote in Chinese: "It will only infuriate me and I will make your reputation suffer more.

"As long as you listen to us and pay a small fee, we will delete the footage and not bother you."

Owen, who has since lodged a police report, told Lee that his friends had also fallen victim to this "heinous" blackmail scheme.

While deepfake can be used in memes for amusement, it can also be misused for nefarious purposes. 

In March 2019, criminals used an artificial intelligence software to fool the CEO of a UK-based energy firm into believing that he was speaking to his boss, Forbes reported. 

He then followed the fraudsters' orders and transferred US$243,000 (S$336,000) to their bank account.

ALSO READ: Deepfake anyone? AI synthetic media tech enters perilous phase

chingshijie@asiaone.com