Real-time deepfake video call fraud

Rather than rely on a single fake, attackers can populate an entire call with synthetic versions of a company's executives, built from publicly available footage.

The decisive trick is manufactured social proof: several recognised, senior faces appearing together and corroborating a request in real time, which overrides an employee's natural caution far more effectively than any email could.

The benchmark case is the 2024 Arup fraud, in which an employee transferred roughly US$25.6 million after a video call where every other participant was synthetic.

As with voice cloning, the effective defence is not spotting the fake but out-of-band verification: confirming any unusual financial instruction through an independent, pre-established channel before acting.