An Ontario senior lost $900,000 to crypto scam using Mark Carney deepfake

An 86-year-old Sault Ste. Marie woman says she lost more than $900,000 in cryptocurrency investments that turned out to be fraud — after seeing a deepfake video of Prime Minister Mark Carney on Facebook.

Judy Skene said she saw an ad on Facebook showing Carney promoting a cryptocurrency investment platform backed by the Bank of Canada. Convinced by the apparent endorsement, she invested $350. Shortly after, someone called claiming her investment had already tripled in value. She decided to keep investing.

"I agreed to put a mortgage of $300,000 on my condominium," Skene said. "Once I did the final payment, there was no more conversation and all my money was gone."

A fake account made it appear her money had doubled, when in reality she'd been defrauded of $900,000. The video wasn't actually Carney — it was a deepfake, a form of artificial intelligence used to create convincing but false images, videos, and sounds.

Mohit Rajhans, an AI expert and media consultant, said that social media platforms should be held accountable when users fall victim to scams involving content like the deepfake. "Let's remember they are making money off of these scams. These ads are running on social media platforms; this is a revenue stream for these apps," he said.

A GoFundMe has been launched to help Skene recover funds.