Trio charged with impersonating CEOs using AI to steal millions from top companies

Feds say the three men stole more than $129 million in total, including more than $11.5 million from a single fintech company in the United Kingdom.MANHATTAN (CN) — Three men used artificial intelligence to “impersonate the voices and/or images” of CEOs and bilk millions from their companies, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in the Southern District of New York.Federal prosecutors say Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan and Guy Sheetrit stole more than $129 million in total between 2024 and 2026 by pretending to be at least seven different high-profile corporate executives around the world.According to prosecutors, the men targeted employees who were in a high enough position to authorize large wire transfers on behalf of their companies. Once the defendants identified their victim, the trio reportedly convinced their target that their help was needed on a confidential financial transaction — often a corporate acquisition.Prosecutors say the men then invited the employees to a voice or video call, where using AI, they were able to swindle their target into believing they were actually the chief executives of the company.“On those calls, the defendants and their co-conspirators would use AI to mimic the voice and at times the image of the impersonated CEO in order to convince the victim employee that the transaction was real,” prosecutors claim.Soall, Hazan and Sheetrit are accused of then passing the victim off to an attorney, who in reality, was once again just one of the men using AI to impersonate a real attorney at a major law firm.“The impersonated attorney would ultimately direct the victim employee to wire a large sum of money in furtherance of that financial transaction to a particular bank account, which was in fact controlled by members of the conspiracy,” prosecutors say. “In sum, the purported corporate transactions were a sham, and the victim employees were not communicating with the real CEO or the real attorney.”It’s not immediately clear which companies were targeted by the novel heist, nor which law firms were impersonated to make it happen. But prosecutors say the men stole massive sums of money with each successful scam.For instance, the government claims that, in March 2025, the men defrauded a United Kingdom-based fintech firm out of more than $11.5 million. In April 2025, they reportedly defrauded a Massachusetts-based mutual fund company out of more than $4.6 million. And in June 2025, they are accused of stealing more than $5.2 million from a Florida-based pet food company.“As alleged, Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan, and Guy Sheetrit abused groundbreaking super intelligence technology to impersonate real people and deceive corporate executives into sending them and their co-conspirators approximately $129 million,” said Jamie McDonald, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, using President Donald Trump’s preferred term for artificial intelligence. “I encourage individuals and the business community to consider how to best protect themselves from the emerging threat of SI-enabled crime.”Prosecutors say each man had a different role. Soall, a 41-year-old of Spain and the United Kingdom, used a handwritten script filled with lawyerly vocabulary to impersonate attorneys. Hazan, a 54-year old of Israel, and Sheetrit, a 42-year-old of Israel and the United Arab Emirates, laundered the stolen cash — prosecutors say that Hazan boasted that, when it comes to professional money laundering, he was “number one all over the world.”The men each face seven charges, including wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering, that could land them decades in prison, if convicted. Soall was arrested in Spain in June, Hazan in Spain in August and Sheetrit in the U.K. in September. Their extradition requests are pending.The indictment is the latest out of Manhattan’s federal court targeting nefarious use of AI. Earlier this year in the same court, a North Carolina man pleaded guilty to creating hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs and using bots to stream them, generating more than $8 million in fraudulent royalties. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads