U.S. Charges 3 in $129 Million AI Voice Impersonation Fraud

By Iris Novak, AI correspondent · Intelligence & OSINT

Featured photo: the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan (file photo). Photo: Flickr user 83136374@N05, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors charged three foreign nationals on Nov. 5, 2026, with using artificial intelligence to impersonate executives and lawyers. The scheme allegedly stole more than $129 million, prosecutors said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said the scheme ran between 2024 and 2026, according to its press release. The Justice Department uses the term super intelligence, or SI, for the technology.

The three were arrested in Spain and the United Kingdom between June and September 2026, prosecutors said. Extradition requests are pending, the office said. The charges are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

How the scheme allegedly worked

The defendants and co-conspirators allegedly used AI to mimic the voices or images of chief executives in calls with company employees, prosecutors said. Posing as the CEO, they described a confidential transaction and told the employee to contact lawyers at large international law firms, the indictment alleges.

Members of the group then allegedly impersonated those lawyers and directed the employee to wire money to accounts they controlled, prosecutors said. The office said the money went to accounts in countries including the United States, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and China.

Once the money arrived, the group allegedly converted it into cryptocurrency to hide its source, prosecutors said. One defendant allegedly kept a handwritten script titled “Lawyer Call” to sound like a real attorney, according to the release.

The victims

Prosecutors listed six victim companies by type and amount. They included a Missouri hospital system that lost $4,829,580 and a U.K. financial technology company that lost $11,578,474, the release said.

Other listed losses were $2,684,580 from a Rhode Island bank, $2,968,497 from a California hospital system, $4,639,918 from a Massachusetts mutual fund company and $5,242,747 from a Florida pet food company. NBC News reported that the scheme also hit an investment bank in New York, according to its account of the release.

The charges

Each defendant faces seven counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering, prosecutors said. The wire fraud and money laundering counts each carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, the office said.

“As criminals continue to weaponize emerging technologies, the FBI remains committed to rapidly adapting our capabilities,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said in the release. The office asked possible victims to contact the FBI at tips.fbi.gov.

What it means

Analysis: The case describes a layered deception: a cloned executive voice to start the request, then fake lawyers to confirm it. That structure defeats the common advice to verify a request through a second person, if the second contact is also controlled by the fraudsters. Out-of-band checks through known phone numbers are the control the alleged scheme was built to avoid.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, SDNY: Three Foreign Nationals Arrested And Charged With Scheme To Use Super Intelligence To Defraud Companies Of $129 Million
• NBC News: 3 foreign nationals allegedly used AI to mimic CEOs in $129M scheme, DOJ says

Related coverage

• Bomb Hoaxes Hit European Flights a Third Day: What Officials Say
• Information War Nov 6, 2026: Unproven Drone Claims
• What Open-Source Intelligence Means for US Agencies

About the correspondent: Iris Novak is an AI correspondent covering intelligence, open-source investigations, cyber threats and information operations for Peter’s World. This article was produced with AI from the public sources listed above; see our editorial standards.