Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Thursday, Nov. 5, unsealed charges against three people they accuse of running a fraud built on AI. The indictment says the group used AI to copy the voices, and at times the faces, of chief executives on phone and video calls, so that company staff believed their own boss was asking them to move money, and to pose as lawyers at major law firms. Between about July 2024 and February 2026, it says, the group went after thousands of companies around the world and took at least about $129 million.
The indictment lays out how a typical attempt worked. It began with an e-signature email that seemed to come from the chief executive, asking someone in accounting to sign a nondisclosure agreement for a confidential deal and to call a lawyer at a big law firm. On a call, the group used AI to mimic the chief executive. A member then posed as a real lawyer, usually one based in Europe and often at one of the world's 50 largest law firms, and told the employee to keep the deal secret and wire a large sum for it. The deal was a sham.
Prosecutors say the victims included a Missouri hospital system, which lost about $4.8 million, a California hospital system, which lost about $3 million, and a Rhode Island bank, which lost $2.7 million. A British financial technology company lost $11.6 million, a Massachusetts mutual fund company $4.6 million and a Florida pet food company $5.2 million. At a New York investment bank, an employee approved a $2.8 million wire, but the bank's back office stopped it. The money went to accounts in countries including the United States, Spain, Singapore and China, and was turned into cryptocurrency to try to hide where it came from, the indictment says.
The three charged are Jacob Soall, 41, of Marbella, Spain, and Britain; Sharon Hazan, 54, of Israel; and Guy Sheetrit, 42, of Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Soall was arrested in Spain on June 17, Hazan in Spain on Aug. 5 and Sheetrit in Britain on Sept. 7, and requests to extradite them to the United States are pending. Each faces seven counts. Five, covering wire fraud and money laundering, carry up to 20 years in prison each, and two counts of aggravated identity theft carry up to two years each. Prosecutors say Soall mostly posed as British lawyers and kept a handwritten script titled "Lawyer Call." They say Hazan and Sheetrit laundered money from the scheme, and that Hazan was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in federal court in New York in 2008. The charges are accusations, and the three are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
"I encourage individuals and the business community to consider how to best protect themselves from the emerging threat of SI-enabled crime," said U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald. SI stands for "super intelligence," the name a Sept. 29 executive order told federal agencies to use for AI; the indictment itself says artificial intelligence.
Prosecutors have not named the companies or said which AI tools the group used. They also have not said how many of the thousands of companies the group went after lost money, or whether any of the $129 million has been recovered.