“If the big boss calls you and says, can you do this? Most people aren't going to want to get in trouble for not doing an important task or questioning their boss.”
Smashing Security · Software Engineering & Infra · November 2026
Context
Palmer was explaining why CEO-fraud deepfakes work even though the technology can now fake a convincing voice and face almost instantly. He was setting up a US Justice Department case against three men accused of stealing about $129 million with deepfaked executives.
Transcript
Yes.
…with the things that she was saying. And people began to twig in the audience. Hang on, this can't really be her. And then she came out from behind the scenes, but it had been completely and utterly faked. It was amusing, but it could have so easily been convincing and used for this kind of fraud.
…compared to just a few years ago. A lot of the sort of software out there to be able to make it is more easily available. It doesn't take as long. I mean, even just a few years ago, apparently it'd take a good few days to make a convincing deep fake. Now I can do it basically instantly. But one of the key problems here with this type of CEO fraud attack is that you mentioned the big boss there. If the big boss calls you and says, can you do this? Most people aren't going to want to get in trouble for not doing an important task or questioning their boss. So with all this in mind, this week, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment announcing that three men have been charged with stealing over $100 million from companies that they defrauded with the aid of deepfakes. Two of the men were arrested in Spain. One was arrested here in the UK, which shows this is a global problem as well. You can steal from anyone, anywhere…
They're really trying, aren't they? They've got to keep the boss out. Again, this is actually evidence of what we've just been talking about. If the boss says something stupid in many organizations, people think, well, we've got to go along with it, haven't we?
Excellent idea, sir. Yes. I'm saying AI instead of what they say because it makes more sense to most of us. Okay, yes. Speaking when the indictment was unsealed, US attorney James McDonald said the accused abused ground rating technology to impersonate real people and deceive executives into…
Yeah.
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