The cryptocurrency investment scene has generated great fortunes but is also a haven for crackpots and criminals. Now, it is pioneering a new innovation in collaboration software – the use of deepfake holograms on Zoom for a nefarious purpose.

That’s according to Patrick Hillman, chief communications officer of cryptocurrency exchange Binance who claims scammers have been impersonating him on Zoom with a deepfake.

In a blog post, Hillman has provided a screenshot of a LinkedIn post in which someone asks him to confirm that he has taken part in a Zoom call with them. The message is one of several he has received from people thanking him for taking part in meetings about opportunities to list crypto assets on Binance.

Here’s one problem. His role doesn’t give him any insight into or oversight of Binance listings. He’s also never met the people messaging him.

Says Hillman: “It turns out that a sophisticated hacking team used previous news interviews and TV appearances over the years to create a ‘deepfake’ of me. Other than the 15 pounds that I gained during Covid being noticeably absent, this deep ake was refined enough to fool several highly intelligent crypto community members.”

The deepfake scam has appeared amid a spike in incident of hackers pretending to be Binance staff on social media and messaging apps.

Consumer tech website, The Verge, expresses some scepticism as to whether deepfakes are sophisticated enough to sustain an impersonation during a live call.

“Experts recommend that the simplest way to tell if you’re talking to a deepfake is simply to ask the individual to turn their head, as machine learning models used to create the deep fake do not generally include a face’s profile,” the website says.

Another consumer tech website, Gizmodo claims that deep fakes are also being used to apply for remote working jobs, according to law enforcement officials. Gizmodo gives this advice: “The best way to tell a deepfake from an actual human is to watch for any video defects or visual glitches or skin texture that doesn’t seem real. Still, many scammers use low-quality cameras to try and mask any sign the person behind the camera is a digital image.

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