Three men used artificial intelligence to impersonate corporate CEOs and attorneys to steal more than $129 million from companies across the world, including American hospitals, banks, and mutual funds — proving that the same tech industry obsessed with censoring your "misinformation" can't be bothered to stop criminals from weaponizing its own tools.
According to an indictment unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Jacob Soall, 41, Sharon Hazan, 54, and Guy Sheetrit, 42, ran the scheme for more than a year and a half, targeting thousands of companies worldwide. They hit a Missouri hospital system for nearly $5 million, a California hospital for about $3 million, a Rhode Island bank for $2.7 million, a Massachusetts mutual fund for over $4.6 million, and a Florida pet food company for roughly $5 million. A U.K. tech company lost more than $11 million. The money was wired to accounts spanning the globe — the U.S., Spain, Portugal, Greece, the UAE, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia, and China — then converted into cryptocurrency and split among the conspirators.
The operation was brazen and low-tech in its social engineering. The defendants would email a company's accounting department pretending to be the CEO, asking help with a confidential transaction. They would then arrange a phone or video call using AI to clone the executive's voice and sometimes image, according to court documents. Next, the employee was told to contact an attorney at a major law firm — who the crew was also ready to impersonate. Soall, who mainly posed as U.K. lawyers, kept a handwritten script titled "Lawyer Call" to sound convincing, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. The fake attorney would instruct the employee to wire the money.
The New York Post reported that Hazan was convicted in a New York court in 2008 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud — a fact the Guardian omitted entirely. The defendants, who hail from Spain, the U.K., Israel, and the UAE, went by nicknames including "Rocky Balboa," "Superman Cash," "Fat Boy," and "Ron." Soall and Hazan were arrested in Spain over the summer; Sheetrit was picked up in the U.K. in September.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said the case "demonstrates how the use of advanced technology can be exploited to commit large-scale fraud" and vowed the Bureau would adapt. U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald acknowledged AI has "great potential" but conceded some will use it for criminal ends. Both outlets carried the same prepared statements.
The men face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and aggravated identity theft. Each count carries up to 20 years, except identity theft, which carries two.
The open question: the same platforms that rush to flag your tweet about election integrity or vaccine side effects built, marketed, and profited from the AI voice-cloning tools that made this $129 million heist possible. Where is the content moderation when the stakes are real?
