Hitting a CEO where it hurts: Recognizing ‘CEO fraud’ and protecting your voice.

Risks of AI voice cloning in “CEO fraud” scams.

Image by Hanna Pad, pexels

If you want to steal an identity or rob a company, it will help to remove the person from the place of business or living as quickly as possible. Perpetrators use mail fraud, social engineering, fake emails or deepfakes. It gets really interesting when mail is redirected and fraudsters gain access to emails, passwords and phone numbers. You as a person are becoming obsolete.

The real gold in fraud is your voice as a managing director.

With CEO fraud, as a managing director, you not only lose your job, but also your identity, your business idea, your home, your reputation, your friends and your family to fraudsters. It is not uncommon for people to also lose their health, freedom and, in some cases, even their lives. The damage is not limited to a company that is hollowed out and robbed — it is also not just one human life — but usually an entire family, maybe a marriage.

To steel your voice, it takes only a few seconds, a short recording, a phone call, a voicemail greeting or a public video is enough material to clone your voice without direct contact. A deepfake voice is an AI-generated replica of a real person’s voice that can be used for fraud. Modern voice cloning technology is fast and scalable.

Familiarity alone is no longer proof that you won’t fall for a perfect AI voice and deepfake scam. Our voices have persuasiveness and credibility. If fraudsters have your voice data, it is easy for them to deliberately exploit this trust in external relationships There is nothing easier today than to steal an identity. If fraudsters gain access to your post, emails and your voice data as a managing director, your life no longer belongs to you, but to them. It’s no longer you talking to your bank, but a damned fraudster with your voice data. Contact is usually made by email or telephone. After collecting all kinds of information about the company to be targeted, they pretend to be the company’s managing director. In some cases, also an authorised person or a family member.

In managing positions, we generally prepare notes and thus document the content of our discussions with business partners, banks and authorities in order to increase the efficiency. Records not only help us in business operations, they can also be used later to react quickly and prevent fraud from affecting others. Meeting notes can be an efficient aid, but not a substitute for your judgement. Human verification remains the strongest defence.

Call filters, spam‑detection tools that analyze call patterns and analyze unusual behavior to block or mark suspicious numbers, detecting known spam‑numbers are not only rare in the offices of startup founders, I doubt that offices, authorities or courts have them. Technology is way ahead of our standards and makes it easy for any stupid fraudster to fool the whole world with just one phone line and an AI voice to catapult a CEO and his company into misery. The quality is enormous, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between authenticity and forgery. The fact that fraud on that scale could be so easy and efficient was far behind my imagination until today.

Feigning authority figures

A phenomenon is that an authority status often increases the willingness to follow or even underpins credibility. When we come into contact with trusted institution or known individuals, we are willing to share informations and accept instructions without questioning. If a voice sounds familiar, people react with trust out of habit without checking authenticity. But a familiar voice is no longer a proof that a call is real.

Contact is usually made by email or telephone.

Image by Beto Prestes, pexels

It makes it efficient for an attacker if both private and business correspondence and phones can be intercepted. Familiar situations or where people expect urgent calls are used specifically to respond quickly under pressure. A review is then not always easy or seems unnecessary at that moment.

To be honest, until 2021 I was convinced that CEO fraud could only affect CEO´s on highest levels of multi-million dollar companies and not a small entrepreneur who works from a home office. I was wrong.

If fraudsters have managed to sneak into your company by power of attorney or a living will, you can be sure that you will not only lose your business, but very likely also your life. Staging up a CEO with false criminal accusations, claiming a fictitious illness or legal incapacity to obtain loans on behalf of third parties — as happened in my case — has nothing in common with responsible representation or the management of business affairs. It is financial abuse, fraud, robbery, and the theft of intellectual property.

According to statistics, until 2017, criminal acts in Germany were directed mainly against large corporations and major international companies. This was followed by attacks on small businesses with high revenues, as they usually do not have a strong compliance management system or other professional protective mechanisms.

Start-ups are particularly vulnerable to fraud. Perpetrators often manage to build up great psychological pressure or to achieve the desired result through coercion. According to the key findings of the current federal report on the scale of losses and case numbers, the annual financial loss resulting from white-collar crime in Germany amounts to approximately €2.76 billion. Fraud — including billing fraud — is the primary driver.

The fraud with my data became really obvious after criminal charges were filed and after I found myself on the street as a CEO. While I didn’t even have a roof over my head, suffering hunger and communication problems by isolation without having a own home to live, fraudsters in 2023 and 2024 used my data again — after filing criminal charges- to dust off loans at Deutsche Bank. I waited in vain for calls, summonses, or notifications regarding the status of the investigation.

[embed]DEUTSCHE BANK SECURES LOANS ON A HOMELESS ENTREPRENEUR How I was transformed from an entrepreneur to a care patient. A stolen Start-up in Germany.medium.com

Nothing makes a crime as efficient as defaming and marginalizing the injured, suppressing the witness and by destroying evidence. If the investigation process is dragged out long enough, fraudsters can lull themselves into the sense of security because the statute of limitations on the punishment will be expired.

Only a few weeks ago my data was stolen again, digital communications are subject to manipulation, third parties gained access to my social media and my e-mail accounts. I would like to urge everyone accompanying my case not to communicate via Facebook Messenger or currently via E-Mail until further notice. Please notice that I do not have a smartphone at the moment and will not communicate via a messenger or an e-mail app.

I haven’t had any phone conversations for a very long time. I generally meet with people only in person since the financial abuse and CEO-Fraud case became obvious. I can assure you that the woman who claims to be me on the phone can only be an AI voice, unless locked up for a crime i have not commited.

If I am arrested as someone affected by this crime and a whistleblower reporting white-collar crimes in Germany for the crime of a chargeback after borrowing a digital piano, sentenced without a hearing with a fine of 900,00 Euro or coercive detention for 30 days in prison, you will find out, I promise.

[embed]Perhaps my last Goodbye — awaiting jailtime for a “Chargeback” The revenge for my notice to authorities and conviction in democracy, the rule of law and justice and the consequence…medium.com