Seeing Is No Longer Believing: The Deepfake Scam Targeting Ordinary People
By Mike LaCorte, CEO, Conflict International
This morning I watched a victim sit on national television and explain, in painful detail, how they had been robbed. Not at knifepoint, not through a hacked password, but by a video of a man they trusted telling them their money was safe. The man was Martin Lewis. Except it wasn’t. It was a machine wearing his face.
Lewis has called himself “the most scammed face in Britain,” and the description is sadly earned. For years criminals have stitched his image into fake adverts. What has changed, and what makes this moment different, is artificial intelligence.
Fraudsters now lift real footage from legitimate broadcasts and use generative tools to clone his voice and likeness so convincingly that the result is, frankly, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. ITV has estimated that something in the region of £20 million has been lost to scams exploiting fake images and videos of Lewis alone. One kitchen fitter lost £76,000. A father of four in Somerset lost £140,000.
These are not careless people. They are ordinary people who trusted a familiar face.
How the Deepfake Investment Scam Actually Works
After 25 years investigating international fraud, I can tell you these operations are not opportunistic. They are highly industrialised syndicates. The pattern is incredibly consistent:
- The Bait: A victim sees a deepfake video on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or MSN in which a trusted figure appears to personally endorse an investment platform. Curiosity turns into an initial deposit.
- The Psychological Hook: A slick, fraudulent dashboard shows the “investment” growing handsomely. Seeing fake profit encourages the victim to inject more capital.
- The Exit Scam: When the victim finally tries to withdraw their funds, the money won’t move. They are told they must first pay “liquidity fees,” “tax,” or “security deposits” to release it. Those payments vanish too.
The genius of it—and I use that word with contempt—is that the fraud borrows credibility it has not earned. The criminals are asking you to trust someone you already trust, manufacturing the synthetic evidence to make that betrayal feel reasonable.
The Second Scam Most People Never See Coming
Here is the part that troubles me most as an investigator, and the part that rarely makes the morning television segment.
When someone realises they have been defrauded, they go looking for help. And the exact same criminal ecosystem is waiting for them. “Recovery room” fraud is a second wave: operators who contact victims promising to recover the lost funds for an upfront fee. They often pose as investigators, lawyers, regulators, or even “blockchain forensic specialists.”
They are, overwhelmingly, the original fraudsters or their associates, returning to harvest the same victim a second time.
Rule of Thumb: If anyone contacts you out of the blue offering to recover money you have lost, treat it as a scam until proven otherwise. Legitimate help does not cold-call you, does not guarantee recovery, and does not demand a large upfront fee before doing any work.
The Honest Truth About Asset Recovery
I will not insult anyone by pretending recovery is simple. It is not. Funds, particularly when moved through cryptocurrency, can be laundered across multiple wallets and jurisdictions within hours. But “difficult” is not “impossible,” and the single biggest factor in any outcome is speed.
If you or a client has been targeted, the priorities are immediate:
- Contact Your Bank Straight Away: If you paid by bank transfer, ask about the reimbursement rules for authorised push payment (APP) fraud. Time matters enormously here.
- Report It: File a report with the appropriate national authorities and report the fraudulent advertisement directly to the hosting platform.
- Preserve Everything: Screenshots, URLs, account names, wallet addresses, payment references, and message logs. Do not delete the conversation in frustration. That material is vital evidence.
- Do Not Pay Upfront "Guarantees": See the warning on recovery room fraud above.
Where genuine, professional investigation adds value is in the forensic work that follows: tracing where funds went, mapping the network behind the operation, attributing pseudonymous accounts to real-world actors, and assembling intelligence that supports a bank’s recovery process, a civil claim, or a law enforcement referral. That is methodical, evidence-led work.
What This Means for Businesses and Individuals
The Martin Lewis deepfakes are a warning shot, not the whole war. The same technology that can clone a consumer champion can clone a Chief Executive authorising a payment, a relative asking for help, or a business partner confirming new bank details. AI has not invented fraud; it has industrialised it.
For businesses, the defence is process, not instinct. Verify instructions through a second, known channel. Be skeptical of urgency. Build “is this real?” into your workflow rather than relying on whether a voice or a face feels genuine.
The hardest lesson of this decade is that seeing is no longer believing—and the criminals understood that before the rest of us did.
Mike LaCorte is CEO of Conflict International, a global private investigations and corporate intelligence firm with offices in London and New York, and President of the Association of British Investigators. If your organisation or a client has been affected by investment fraud, deepfake-enabled scams, or related asset-tracing matters, Conflict International’s team can help you understand your options.