Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan and Guy Sheetrit were charged with multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft, the release said.
The trio and their co-conspirators allegedly used AI to impersonate the voices and images of corporate executives at several companies, as well as attorneys at “major law firms” to dupe employees into sending large payments to accounts the conspirators controlled, according to the release.
“The alleged scheme orchestrated by Soall, Hazan and Sheetrit demonstrates how the use of advanced technology can be exploited to commit large-scale fraud,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said in the release. “As criminals continue to weaponize emerging technologies, the FBI remains committed to rapidly adapting our capabilities to identify, investigate and disrupt those who seek to harm New Yorkers and businesses operating in our communities.”
The scheme allegedly involved the three defendants and their co-conspirators pretending to be the CEO of the targeted companies, according to the release. They would contact employees, saying they needed their help with a confidential financial transaction, using AI to mimic the CEO’s image and/or voice.
They would allegedly tell the employee to contact attorneys at large international law firms, then impersonate the lawyer when the employee got in touch, the release said. Then, they would direct the employee to wire a large sum of money to a bank account held by members of the conspiracy.
The FBI did not identify the targeted companies by name but said they included a Missouri-based hospital system that lost $4.8 million, a bank headquartered in Rhode Island that lost $3 million and a United Kingdom FinTech that lost $11.6 million, according to the release.
Soall, 41, of Spain and the United Kingdom, Hazan, 54, of Israel, and Sheetrit, 42, of Israel and the United Arab Emirates each face up to several decades in prison if convicted, the release said. Hazan allegedly bragged that he has been engaged in money laundering since 1994, laundering more than $400 million in just the past three years. Among professional money launderers, Hazan claimed to be “No. 1 all over the world.”
The charges are the latest example of how criminals are employing AI to defraud businesses. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Scale Amplification: How Revenue Amplifies Agent-Driven Identity” found in April that 58% of companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue encountered AI-generated documents or deepfake-related attacks in the past year, 11 percentage points more than smaller businesses.
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