Three foreign nationals have been indicted in connection with an alleged international fraud scheme that federal prosecutors say used AI technology to impersonate business executives and lawyers and steal more than $129 million.
According to an indictment filed in the Southern District of New York, Jacob Soall, known as “Rocky Balboa” and “Seba Clarke,” was arrested in Spain in June; Sharon Hazan, who used the nicknames “Superman Cash”, “Mission Impossible”, “Fat Boy” and “Ron”, was arrested in Spain in August; and Guy Sheetrit was arrested in the United Kingdom in September.
All three are accused of participating in a scheme that ran from July 2024 to February 2026, involving the use of artificial intelligence to impersonate the voices and images of corporate executives and attorneys at major law firms in order to trick employees of several companies into transferring large sums of money to bank accounts controlled by the group, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The trio and their co-conspirators would tell these employees – usually in accounting departments – that they needed help with a confidential financial transaction and would use AI technology to imitate the voice of the company’s CEO, according to the press release.
Then, while posing as the CEO, they directed employees to contact lawyers at large international law firms who they claimed were also working on the deals, but in reality, those “lawyers” were also part of the scheme, prosecutors said.
Finally, one of the people involved in the scheme allegedly asked the employee to wire large sums of money to bank accounts opened around the world, according to the press release.
Once the employee wired the money, the group would convert the money into cryptocurrency “in an effort to conceal the source, ownership and control of the stolen proceeds and distribute them among themselves and their co-conspirators,” prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office says the scheme stole more than $129 million from companies around the world, including an investment bank in New York, a hospital system in Missouri, a bank in Rhode Island, a hospital system in California, a financial technology company in the United Kingdom, a mutual fund company in Massachusetts and a pet food company in Florida.
Soall, originally from Spain and the United Kingdom, posed as British lawyers and used a script called “Lawyer Call” to pose as a real lawyer when speaking with victims, the release said.
Hazan, of Israel, laundered the money from this scheme, according to the press release. Prosecutors say Hazan “bragged about laundering money since 1994; of having laundered more than $400 million in the last three years alone; and that, among professional money launderers, he was “number one in the whole world.”
Hazan was also convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in the Southern District of New York in 2008.
Sheetrit, originally from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, is also accused of money laundering, the press release said.
All three were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft, money laundering conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. Each of the seven charges carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
“IS technology offers enormous potential. But the public should recognize that some seek to use this emerging technology to pursue criminal goals,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said in the statement, using the abbreviation for superintelligence, the White House’s preferred term for artificial intelligence. “I encourage individuals and the business community to consider how best to protect themselves against the emerging threat of IS-based crime. »
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