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Scammers Reportedly Used AI Voice Clone and YouTube Footage to Impersonate WPP CEO in Unsuccessful Scam Attempt

15 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Deepfake Technology Developers and Synthetic Audio Generation Technology and deployed by Scammers Impersonating Mark Read and Scammers allegedly harmed Mark Read, Wpp and 2 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
15 reportsMay 2024 - Jul 2025

What happened

Scammers reportedly attempted to impersonate WPP CEO Mark Read using AI-generated voice cloning and YouTube footage in a Microsoft Teams scam. They allegedly created a fake WhatsApp account with Read’s image and used deepfake audio to deceive an agency leader into setting up a new business. The scheme, which was unsuccessful, aimed to solicit money and personal data.

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (14)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. CEO of world’s biggest ad firm targeted by deepfake scam
    theguardian.com · Nick Robins-Early
  2. WPP boss targeted by deepfake scammers using voice clone
    ft.com · Daniel Thomas
  3. WPP CEO Addresses Deepfake Scam Attempt
    designrush.com · Roberto Orosa
  4. CEO of world's biggest ad agency falls victim to elaborate deepfake scam
    nypost.com · Shannon Thaler
  5. Boss of world’s biggest ad firm impersonated by AI in elaborate deepfake scam
    telegraph.co.uk · James Warrington
  6. The Drum’s Daily Briefing: Apple’s ad apology and beware the WPP AI voice scam
    thedrum.com · The Drum
  7. WPP CEO Mark Read targeted by deepfake attack
    adgully.com · Adgully Bureau
  8. WPP chief exec Mark Read targeted by deepfake scammers
    mmm-online.com · Will Green
  9. AI voice, fake WhatsApp account: How scammers targeted CEO of world’s biggest ad firm using deepfake
    timesofindia.indiatimes.com · TOI Tech Desk
  10. WPP CEO Impersonated in Deepfake Scheme to Steal Execs Money
    entrepreneur.com · Emily Rella
  11. WPP CEO Mark Read targeted by deep fake AI scam
    bizcommunity.com · Bizcommunity
  12. WPP CEO Mark Read targeted by deepfake AI scam
    marketing-interactive.com · A'bidah Zaid Shirbeeni
  13. Deepfake scams escalate, hitting more than half of businesses
    cybersecuritydive.com · Alexei Alexis
  14. Why detecting dangerous AI is key to keeping trust alive in the deepfake era
    weforum.org · Ben Colman

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Mark Read, Wpp, Wpp Employees, General Public

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

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

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

  • 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)

  • 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)

  • 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)

  • 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)

  • 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)

  • 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)

  • 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)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Source record: incident #983 on the AI Incident Database · all 15 reports