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AI incident #1290 ·

Alleged Fabricated News Sites and Deepfakes Impersonated Maltese Ministers, Financial Experts, and Media to Promote NethertoxAGENT Fraud

Open on the AI Incident Database 2 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

What happened

Purportedly AI-generated deepfake videos and fabricated news pages impersonating Maltese ministers, journalists, financial experts, and major media outlets reportedly promoted the fraudulent "NethertoxAGENT" investment platform. The scam used synthetic interviews, cloned branding, and falsified testimonials to mislead social media users, reportedly inducing financial losses and prompting law enforcement concern in Malta.

Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.

News reports (2)

Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.

  1. Deepfake scam articles impersonate ministers after Budget Day
    timesofmalta.com · Neville Borg · AIID #6715
  2. Fact-check Malta: Deepfake scam articles impersonate ministers after Budget Day
    meddmo.eu · Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory, Times of Malta · AIID #6976

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Tvm, Times Of Malta, Silvio Schembri, Rosianne Cutajar, Roberta Metsola, Robert Abela, Newsbook, Michael C. Bonello, Matthew Bonanno, Maltatoday, Malta Independent, Malta Financial Services Authority, Lombard Bank Malta, Kenneth Farrugia, Journalists In Malta, Journalists, Journalistic Integrity, Investors In Malta, Investors, Ian Borg, General Public Of Malta, General Public, Francis J. Vassallo, Epistemic Integrity, Clyde Caruana

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
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Sectors
—
Countries
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Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

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