Two Israeli men were among three individuals charged for their alleged involvement in a fraud scheme that used artificial intelligence to impersonate CEOs and steal over $129 million from companies around the world, according to documents unsealed by the FBI and the US Attorney's Office (USAO) for the Southern District of New York on Thursday.
Israeli national Sharon Hazan and dual Israeli-Emirati national Guy Sheetrit, along with co-conspirator and dual Spanish-British national Jacob Soall, were all charged with multiple counts of crimes related to wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft in relation to the scheme.
Hazan, Sheetrit, Soall used AI to impersonate CEOs, lawyers
According to the USAO, the three men are accused of beginning each instance of the fraud scheme by choosing employees at companies to target.
They allegedly used AI to falsify the voice and image of each company's CEO and communicated with targeted employees, claiming they needed them to carry out a large, secret financial transaction.
The USAO claimed that while presenting themselves as the CEO, co-conspirators instructed the employee to contact lawyers at large international law firms they said were working on the transaction. To convince the employee that the fraudulent financial transfer was legitimate, they also impersonated the lawyers.
A co-conspirator impersonating a lawyer then allegedly directed the employee to wire a large amount of money to bank accounts controlled by additional, unidentified co-conspirators in other countries, such as Spain, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia, and China.
Once the affected companies' employees wired the money, the co-conspirators are accused of converting it into cryptocurrency to conceal the origin and ownership of the stolen funds before distributing it amongst themselves.
Through the scheme, they allegedly stole over $129 million from various companies across the US and the world, including $11,578,474 from a UK-based financial technology company, $4,829,580 from a hospital system headquartered in Missouri, $5,242,747 from a Florida-based pet food company, and $2,968,497 from another hospital system headquartered in California.
Co-conspirators arrested in Spain, UK, awaiting extradition to US
Soall is accused of primarily impersonating the fake lawyers used in the scheme, using a script to sound like a real attorney when speaking with targeted employees and convincing them not to discuss the financial transaction with other employees. He was arrested in Spain on July 17.
Hazan was accused of being responsible for much of the money laundering in the scam, along with other involvement. He allegedly bragged that he had laundered over $400 million in the past few years and claimed to be “number one all over the world” among professional money launderers.
Hazan was previously convicted of fraud charges in New York in 2008 and was arrested for the AI scam in Spain on September 7.
Sheetrit was also allegedly involved in the fraud scheme’s money laundering efforts and other activities before being arrested in the United Kingdom on September 7.
Extradition requests for the three co-conspirators are pending. If charged, they face maximum sentences of 20 years per count for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and two counts of money laundering, plus two years per count for two counts of aggravated identity theft.