Three charged in $129 million AI impersonation fraud

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an indictment on November 5, 2026 charging three foreign nationals with using artificial intelligence to impersonate corporate chief executives and attorneys at major law firms in a scheme the government says took in at least about $129 million from companies in the United States and abroad.

The defendants are Jacob Soall, 41, of Marbella, Spain, and the United Kingdom; Sharon Hazan, 54, of Israel; and Guy Sheetrit, 42, of Israel and the United Arab Emirates, according to the indictment and a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Each is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft, money laundering conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. The charges are allegations, and none of the men has been convicted.

The indictment, a superseding indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York, alleges the scheme ran from at least July 2024 until at least February 2026 and targeted thousands of companies. Prosecutors say the group opened by emailing accounting staff and other employees able to authorize large payments, writing as if from the company's chief executive and asking for help with a confidential financial transaction.

On the calls that followed, the indictment alleges, the defendants used AI to mimic the voice and at times the image of the impersonated chief executive to convince the employee the deal was real. The employee was then passed to what appeared to be a lawyer at a large international law firm, a role prosecutors say a member of the conspiracy also played with AI. That supposed attorney directed the wire to a bank account the government says the group controlled.

Prosecutors itemized six individual losses in the office's release. ABC News reported the figures: $4,829,580 from a hospital system headquartered in Missouri, $2,684,580 from a bank headquartered in Rhode Island, $2,968,497 from a hospital system headquartered in California, $11,578,474 from a financial technology company headquartered in the United Kingdom, $4,639,918 from a mutual fund company headquartered in Massachusetts, and $5,242,747 from a pet food company headquartered in Florida. The indictment says funds moved to accounts in countries including the United States, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia and China, and were converted to cryptocurrency.

Soall is alleged to have handled the attorney impersonations, working from a handwritten script titled "Lawyer Call" that carried lines meant to keep victim employees from discussing the transaction with colleagues. Prosecutors say Hazan and Sheetrit laundered money from the scheme. The indictment says Hazan boasted that he had laundered money since 1994, that he had moved more than $400 million in the previous three years, and that among professional money launderers he was "number one all over the world." Hazan was convicted in the Southern District of New York in 2008 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald warned in the office's release of the "emerging threat of SI-enabled crime," using the term "super intelligence," or SI, that runs through the charging documents. McDonald said that, as alleged, the three men "abused groundbreaking super intelligence technology to impersonate real people and deceive corporate executives into sending them and their co-conspirators approximately $129 million," and urged businesses to consider how to guard against the threat. Courthouse News Service, which published the indictment, noted that SI is a term the White House has favored for artificial intelligence.

Lawyers for Soall and Sheetrit did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment, the Associated Press reported. It was not clear from the AP account whether Hazan had an attorney. The U.S. Attorney's Office did not immediately respond to a voicemail the AP left.

Each of the seven counts carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, except the two aggravated identity theft counts, which carry a maximum of two years each, the office said.

For people who work with voice and likeness, the case shows AI cloning being used at criminal scale on live calls rather than in posted video. That is the same capability at the center of the beat's consent fight, the difference between a likeness a creator licenses and one someone else takes. Nothing in the indictment names a model or platform, and prosecutors do not say which AI tools the group used.

All three were arrested in Europe between June and September 2026. Extradition requests are pending, and no U.S. trial date has been set.