Deepfake Video of Bulgarian PM Used in Financial Fraud Scheme
Scammers created a deepfake video featuring Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelazkov to promote a fake investment platform impersonating news outlet NOVA. The scheme promised high daily returns on small investments and used the manipulated video to deceive people into participating in a fraudulent financial program.
What happened
A fake website impersonating NOVA Bulgaria's domain (inkorass.ink) was created to promote a fraudulent investment platform. A manipulated deepfake video featuring Prime Minister Rosen Zhelazkov was used to convince people that he was endorsing the scheme and demonstrating how to make easy profits.
The scam invited people to invest 25 Bulgarian leva with promises of daily dividends and returns of up to 12,000 leva within the first month. The Bulgarian Council of Ministers stated that Prime Minister Zhelazkov never made such a statement and immediately reported the incident to the Cybersecurity Department.
Reported impact
The scheme targeted the general public by exploiting trust in the PM and the news outlet NOVA to lure potential victims into financial fraud.
Index analysis
The fake domain and website source code required minimal technical effort and cost approximately $10 to register. The deepfake video used a synthetic voice closely mimicking the PM but with mechanical prosody lacking natural speech variations, and was created for approximately $20.
A cybersecurity expert noted that the synthetic voice was 'very close to the premier's, but has level intonation, without peaks in speech.' The scammers likely used an online translator to adapt the website content.
Governance controls
The Bulgarian Council of Ministers reported the case to the Cybersecurity Department of the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (GDBOP). According to unofficial sources, the fake website's domain was registered in the United States and investigation was already underway.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.