Three Canadian men reportedly lost hundreds of thousands of dollars after watching videos that purportedly showed prominent figures vouching for a cryptocurrency investment scheme.

According to CTV News Toronto, Mohammad Haque came across a video on social media that showed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explaining how Canadians could generate gains by investing in crypto.

Haque decided to put in money starting with 1,200 CAD ($880), but when he thought that he had amassed $424,775 from his investments, he discovered that his account was actually empty. 

The video he watched turned out to be a deepfake manipulated by artificial intelligence (AI). Haque lost 226,000 CAD ($165,610) to the scam.

Darrell Budnick, who was defrauded of 130,000 CAD ($95,262), saw a similar deepfake video. He thought he was making profits after investing in the scheme but later realized that he could not withdraw his funds.

“Right now I’m panicking. I have a heart condition that’s getting worse. It hurts. It’s scary. I thought I was secure, and now I’m not.”

Giovanni Pugliano was also duped after watching a YouTube video that features Elon Musk saying people can start investing in cryptocurrency with just a few hundred dollars and become rich. The video was a hoax and Pugliano lost 17,000 CAD ($12,457).

“I ended up putting in a lot more than I expected and all of a sudden, I was broke.”

According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, investors across the country lost 148 million CAD ($108.45) to fraudulent investment scams in the first half of 2024. The majority of these schemes involve cryptocurrency. 

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