Three Men Charged Over $129 Million AI Scheme Impersonating CEOs and Lawyers

The indictment, brought by the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York and announced on Thursday, names Jacob Soall, 41, Sharon Hazan, 54, and Guy Sheetrit, 42. Soall and Hazan were arrested in Spain and Sheetrit in the United Kingdom between June and September, and extradition requests for all three are pending, according to CBS News. The alleged fraud ran from July 2024 to February 2026, CyberScoop reported, citing court records.

The case shows how voice and video cloning can be turned against a control many finance teams rely on: confirming a large payment request by speaking to the person who made it. Prosecutors say the men used AI to alter and imitate the voices, and sometimes the images, of executives and attorneys, then called or held video meetings with employees who had authority to send money.

According to the prosecutors' account, a target would first receive an email posing as a message from the chief executive, asking for help with a sensitive financial transaction. CyberScoop reported that some approaches began with an email that appeared to come from an e-signature company and required the employee to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The employee was then told to contact a lawyer at a large international law firm, who was in fact one of the defendants, and was instructed to wire funds. Soall mainly posed as UK lawyers and used what the US attorney's office described as a handwritten script titled "Lawyer Call".

The money went to accounts in the United States, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia and China, according to the Justice Department. It was then converted into cryptocurrency "in an attempt to conceal the source, ownership, and control of the stolen proceeds" and shared among the defendants and co-conspirators, the department said. Hazan and Sheetrit are accused of laundering the proceeds.

CyberScoop, citing court records, listed losses of almost $11.6m at a UK financial technology company, $5.2m at a Florida pet food company, $4.8m at a Missouri hospital system, $4.6m at a Massachusetts mutual fund company, nearly $3m at a California hospital system, $2.8m at a New York investment company and nearly $2.7m at a Rhode Island bank. Reports gave slightly different rounded figures for some of the victims.

Prosecutors say the defendants used aliases including "Seba Clarke" and "Rocky Balboa" for Soall and "Superman Cash", "Fat Boy" and "Ron" for Hazan. Hazan was convicted in the same district in 2008 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. CyberScoop reported that Sheetrit is from Israel and the UAE; reports differed on the other defendants' nationalities.

The men face counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering conspiracy and money laundering. The wire fraud and money laundering charges each carry a maximum of 20 years in prison, and the seven counts together carry a combined maximum of 104 years, according to CyberScoop.

Jamie McDonald, the US attorney, said in a statement that AI held great promise but that some would try to use it for criminal ends. "The alleged scheme orchestrated by Soall, Hazan, and Sheetrit demonstrates how the use of advanced technology can be exploited to commit large-scale fraud," said James C. Barnacle Jr., the FBI assistant director in charge of the New York office.

The three have not yet appeared in a US court. The case will move to Manhattan once the extradition proceedings in Spain and the UK are resolved.