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We exposed a global AI scam
Scammers used a system of deepfakes, phishing websites and spoofed numbers to con people from around the world
Social media has been flooded with suspicious videos impersonating well-known faces and organisations, including the BBC, Elon Musk and David Beckham, in a dodgy financial scheme.
Over the course of months, we uncovered several dubious posts, ads and websites peddling a financial scam all linked in a tangled web of fraud.
Read on to discover where our investigation led us and get some tips on protecting yourself so you don’t fall for these types of sophisticated scams.
A version of this article was originally published in Which? Tech magazine.
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How we uncovered the scam
Tali Ramsey, Which? investigator
'When I saw a video of a BBC news broadcast on Facebook, my suspicions began to rise. While it looked like a genuine clip, featuring the familiar BBC background, logo, sound and presenter, it was posted from a random account and promoted the ability to "secure your retirement" with a "new Quantum AI program".
'These adverts popped up on my social media feeds over the next few weeks and all promoted an investment program called Quantum AI (note that this is in no way related to Google’s similarly named initiative to build quantum computing) and featured familiar faces.
'I saw a total of 25 ads, in which David Beckham, Martin Lewis, Elon Musk, Richard Branson and BBC journalists appeared to speak about this scheme where "anyone could get rich". These adverts linked to 24 websites.
'Most of the websites I visited impersonated news sites – including the UK’s BBC and Daily Mirror, CNN and Forbes from the US, Germany’s DW News, Spain’s El Universo and Italy’s Domenica In. All with fake news stories further promoting the investment scheme. I signed up to these sites for the purposes of this investigation.'
Fake ads featuring deepfakes
Scroll through our gallery to see examples of the scam Quantum AI ads we saw.
Quantum AI scam
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A large collection of images displayed on this page are available at https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-exposed-a-global-ai-scam-quantum-ai-a6E3T4Y5WHVc
Podcast
Listen to Tali Ramsey talk about how she uncovered this scam.
What the scammers did next
All of the websites asked you to fill out your name, number and email address, so you could be contacted by a ‘financial adviser'.
After signing up, we were bombarded by dozens of calls a day. The script on the other end of the line became very familiar: ‘Quantum AI is a system which utilises artificial intelligence to trade and make investments automatically on your behalf!’
This was always followed by a request for a minimum £200-£250 investment to start.
Sometimes, we could hear other people making calls and speaking to recipients in the background, pointing to a possible call centre. Other times, we were told we couldn’t call them back on the same number and they couldn’t provide another number to call back on.
The investment had to happen quickly, there and then.
Robert's attention was caught by a video featuring a deepfake version of Elon Musk talking about an investment scheme called Quantum AI on a breakfast show.
The interviewer claimed to have made $34 on the platform during the segment. ‘It was very convincing,’ Robert recalled. He followed the advert’s link, signed up and paid £219 to join the platform.
Robert was called daily with various instructions. One day, he was asked to perform a task on his phone, which he couldn’t manage so the caller did it from their end, raising his suspicions.
To retrieve his earnings, he was asked to download an app and pay $400, but his instincts held him back.
In total, he lost two separate sums: £219, which was returned by his bank as it was still pending; and £250, which was stolen by the scammers.
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A web of fraud
Quantum AI operates the same way all genuine businesses do when setting up an online presence.
The fraudsters behind it start by registering a domain name with a domain registrar for a small fee, meaning that this domain name (or web address) can only be used by Quantum AI.
Then the scammers find a domain hosting provider to host the website. This is a service provider that rents out space on its or another organisation’s servers to store the website’s files and data. Essentially, a domain host is where the website lives on the internet.
The website is then created. For this scam, a fake news article was created. This promoted a non-existent investment scheme with a form to fill out your contact details. The adverts are then posted on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) and link to these fake news websites.
A scammer uses your contact details and calls you from a spoofed number – so your phone displays a number the fraudster chooses.
You’ll be led to believe you’re transferring money into a trading account. But, in reality, scammers will get you to transfer money into a bank account that they operate.
Balaram found Quantum AI through a social media ad and clicked through to a website where he entered his details.
He was then redirected to Spencer & Stanley's website. This is a Luxembourg-based company that the UK financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has warned about, and which has been repeatedly reported by victims as a scam.
Balaram was contacted by a ‘financial adviser’ via WhatsApp and urged to make a $250 investment. ‘I saw the value of my investment double within two days,’ recalled Balaram. He was pressured to invest more through persistent calls, causing him to suspect something was dodgy.
He also saw that his initial transaction was made to ‘Smithville International’, which to him sounded ‘like a holiday home’.
Balaram had to turn his phone to silent mode to stop call after call from ringing. At one point, he was even told to pay the scammer money to stop her from calling.
What we found
This is what we uncovered when we dug into who was behind Quantum AI:
- The physical addresses listed on the websites led to random buildings, petrol stations and hotels when searched for in Google Maps.
- The contact info on the websites comprised bogus phone numbers and email addresses.
- Looking up the website registrant information, 11 of the websites were registered in Reykjavik, Iceland, at an address linked to other scams. The others were registered to buildings, petrol stations and roads in the US and UK.
- The IP addresses of the websites can tell you where their server is located – 22 out of 24 of them used Cloudflare, which was used to provide a reverse proxy that hides the IP addresses.
- Most of the various numbers the scammers contacted me on were spoofed, meaning that they couldn't be traced to anyone linked to the scam.
What we did
We reported the websites through Cloudflare’s abuse reporting form. Three were considered to be in violation of Cloudflare’s abuse policy, one wasn’t active, and one came back as not using Cloudflare.
For five of them, we were given other hosting providers to contact. We didn’t hear back from these and the reports were undeliverable for two of the websites. There were also six other domain hosts involved (websites can have more than one) – none responded when we contacted them.
We also reported all of the websites to their registrants. Some disabled the domains.
One registrant wanted proof in the form of an image of the webpage, but the webpage was down and we had no response when we told them this. Others didn’t reply and some said that the domain host was the more appropriate abuse contact (which we had already contacted).
This scam hasn’t just impacted people in the UK.
In March this year, the Australian government’s National Anti-Scam Centre released a scam alert warning of ‘fake celebrity online investment scams.’ In the warning, it included an example of a site impersonating Australia’s Today Show presenters interviewing actor Hugh Jackman about the platform.
In May, Hong Kong’s securities and futures markets regulator, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), issued a warning about Quantum AI. It described the scheme as a fraudulent cryptocurrency trading platform, which uses the image of Elon Musk to lure victims.
There were also eight reports made by Quantum AI victims from 2020 to 2024 to the US and Canada’s Better Business Bureau (BBB), which provides information on businesses, handles consumer complaints about firms and publishes scam warnings.
What’s the UK regulator doing?
Ofcom regulates communication services, including telecoms and the internet, in the UK. We contacted it about Quantum AI and asked what was being done to protect people.
An Ofcom spokesperson told us: ‘Fraudsters’ tactics are increasingly sophisticated, and often involve using multiple channels. Tackling this complex problem requires coordinated action from the police, Government, regulators and industry.
'We’ve strengthened our rules and guidance for phone companies, to block scam calls from abroad that use spoofed UK landline numbers. And similar plans are underway to block more calls that spoof UK mobile numbers.
'When new duties under the UK’s Online Safety Act start coming into force next year, tech firms will have to assess the risk of illegal content or activity on their platforms – including fraud – take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of it appearing, and act swiftly to remove it when they become aware of it.’
What does Which? want?
Scams are often successful by using more than one platform. This is why Which?, alongside other organisations, has urged the government to make it easier for the relevant companies and authorities to share fraud intelligence, to better understand and tackle scams.
Scams are hiding in plain sight – they’re live on multiple platforms and often going unflagged. This means criminals are able to scam and scam again. While we wait for the law to catch up with their tricks, the onus is on you to protect yourself.
Read about the latest scams circulating
5 ways you can protect yourself
- Ignore social media ads that aren’t posted from official accounts and feature well-known celebrities or new organisations.
- Be wary of entering your personal information into websites you’ve never visited before – these details can be used to scam you now or in the future.
- Use Google’s reverse image search to check if an image has been used elsewhere. Sometimes, deepfake videos are a compilation of images that already exist, so this is a good way to find the original. You can search an image by taking a screenshot of it and selecting the image icon on the right of the search bar on Google.
- You can sometimes discover quick information on a web address by typing it into the Who.is website. Newly created websites should be a red flag.
- Be suspicious of unsolicited calls from random numbers. Consider using a call-blocking phone to stop these on a landline and activating call blocking on your mobile.
Blocking numbers on your mobile phone
- On an iPhone you can silence unknown callers: click Settings > Phone. Scroll down, toggle on Silence Unknown Callers.
- On Android you can block numbers: open your Phone app, select Call history and then the number you want to block > Block/report spam.
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