Colombia: Deepfake scams target users

Colombian media reported a scam tactic that uses deepfake videos to mimic the faces and voices of real people, with fake posts aimed at extracting personal data, banking information or money through bogus investments and offers. Another local report described hyperrealistic videos generated with artificial intelligence to impersonate public figures and promote fake investments, cryptocurrencies, commercial offers or donation requests.

What do these fake videos do?

These setups alter original recordings or generate new pieces with AI so they can pass as believable messages from known figures. According to La Silla Vacía, a video attributed to a presenter and to Colombian public figures was verified as fake, and the edited material led users to pages where they were asked to hand over personal data.

Warnings from Semana and El País Cali point to the same operating pattern, using a third party’s image to build trust and push victims to fill out forms, invest in supposed products or respond to a request for money. In both cases, the end goal is financial gain or bank data theft.

What techniques appear in financial fraud?

A Semana piece on financial fraud in Colombia said artificial intelligence can be used to impersonate identities, forge documents and bypass authentication mechanisms. The same report added that fraud detection can also rely on advanced analytics, with signals such as unusual changes in habits, unknown devices and new payees.

The logic is preventive. Instead of waiting for money to move, controls are designed to spot abnormal patterns before the transaction is completed. The available material does not describe a single official Colombian response, but it does place behavioral analytics at the center of efforts to counter impersonation and digital fraud.

What other regional cases appeared in the search?

Tecnogus, citing ESET Latin America researchers, described a regional investment scam network that used sponsored ads in Gmail, pages mimicking news outlets and AI voice cloning. That coverage recommended alerting the bank, preserving evidence and filing a complaint with cybercrime authorities.

The report does not confirm Colombian victims or amounts, but it shows that these campaigns combine multiple layers of deception, from targeted advertising to voice clones. In parallel, DPL News reported, attributing it to ColCERT, that criminals use AI to make campaigns more precise and harder to detect, and that fraud accounted for nearly 80% of incidents handled by the team in the previous two years, although that figure could not be confirmed with the official document or the methodology used to calculate it.