Sinister Designs

Olga Loginova and Oliver Fisk (Vlast) and Emmanuel Morimont (RTBF). Читайте этот материал на русском. Fanny Jandrain, one of the most recognizable faces in Belgian television journalism, had never endorsed an online trading platform.But there she was, staring at her own face as she appeared to urge viewers to invest their savings using an online brokerage.As it turns out, the television presenter’s likeness had been stolen.The video was a deepfake, generated using artificial intelligence by a group of scammers to draw traffic to fraudulent investment websites.Once redirected towards a money-managing platform, unsuspecting users would be contacted directly by phone.They were then encouraged, little by little, to make deposits into a brokerage account, transferring more funds over time as their trades appeared to generate positive returns.Behind the site was Andrey Siluyanov, a 41-year-old web designer from Kazakhstan who had already been publicly named in a Swedish anti-fraud investigation two years earlier – yet had never faced criminal proceedings in his native country.Siluyanov was, however, just one part of a wider international criminal network, consisting of other IT contractors, proxy businessmen, call centers, and shell companies, scattered across multiple countries around the world.The group is suspected of having defrauded hundreds of victims across Europe using their online investment platform.