Investor and entrepreneur Mikhail Patsan sent 1 bitcoin to scammers because he believed that the money was requested by his business partner.
The unusual story was shared by dev.ua.
-$72,000 for the Evening
According to Mikhail, a couple of weeks ago, in the evening, he was chatting on Telegram with his business partner, discussing bitcoin, which was valued at about $72,000 at that time, and the appropriateness of selling it.
At that time, Mikhail was in the USA, and his partner was in Ukraine. The next day after lunch, Mikhail received another voice message from his partner, as they usually communicated, asking him if he had sold the bitcoin. They exchanged a few more messages, one of which from Mikhail's partner was as follows: "I'm at the bank, send me one bitcoin."
Mikhail mentioned that it was normal for them to receive such money-related questions during their conversations, but he still called his partner.
"I call him because I had certain questions: first, I had a little less than one bitcoin, and second, why would he need one from me. My logic also worked, social engineering and all that, so I called him, albeit through Telegram," Mikhail recalls.
His partner missed the call and instead sent a voice message, claiming he was at the bank, unable to talk right now, and would call back in about 40 minutes. According to Mikhail, the conversation style and voice were completely identical to his partner's.
After 20-30 minutes, the partner contacted him again, but instead of calling back, he sent a video message saying that it was really him, not artificial intelligence. This message convinced Mikhail, and he sent what was requested by the partner. When asked when he could return the funds, the partner replied — tomorrow at 11 o'clock.
So, as Mikhail recounts, yesterday no one returned the funds to him. As it turned out, his partner was probably an artificial intelligence. More precisely, criminals who, using AI tools, deceived him of the funds.
Loss Results
The next day, when Mikhail contacted his partner, it turned out that the latter's Telegram account had been hacked, and messages were sent to many other contacts with similar requests to send funds, but with different amounts, catering to the recipient. According to the calculations of Mikhail and his partner, only from a close circle of people, the attackers transferred about $500,000 in an hour.
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