Deepfake Video of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Other Officials Reportedly Used in Scam to Defraud Citizens Across 20 Provinces

A deepfake scam allegedly using AI-generated videos of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and other officials reportedly defrauded victims across 20 provinces, tricking them into paying Rp 250,000 to Rp 1 million ($15-$60) for purported financial aid. The fraudulent clips, circulated on TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp, appeared to show Prabowo offering assistance. Police reportedly arrested two suspects in February 2025, but deepfake scams exploiting high-profile figures continue to spread.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 4 Malicious actors
• Primary risk subdomain: 4.3 Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

Scammers used AI deepfake technology to impersonate President Prabowo Subianto and other public figures to run fraudulent financial aid scams, swindling victims out of money.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The risk was caused by human scammers intentionally using deployed AI deepfake generation tools to defraud victims.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The AI system involved is used to generate deepfakes (AI-generated content), which falls under Risk Level 3 due to transparency obligations to inform users that the content is AI-generated.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: unspecified
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Voice Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown voice cloning technology developers, Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: Unknown scammers, Scammers impersonating Prabowo Subianto
• Alleged harmed parties: Prabowo Subianto, Indonesian government officials, Government of Indonesia, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, General public of Indonesia

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: Yes, deepfake videos were created and spread to facilitate financial fraud.

Directly caused: AI deepfake tools were used to generate fraudulent videos of President Prabowo Subianto and other public figures to deceive viewers.

Inferred additional harm: Dozens of similar deepfake videos were likely created and circulated across platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, exposing millions of users to malicious content.

Epistemic

Reported: Yes, the deepfake videos fabricated statements by the President offering financial aid.

Directly caused: The deepfake videos misled viewers into believing President Prabowo Subianto was personally offering financial aid, leading to widespread misinformation across social media platforms.

Inferred additional harm: The proliferation of high-quality deepfakes makes it increasingly difficult for the public to distinguish between real and fabricated videos of public officials, eroding the shared information ecosystem.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 260
• People reportedly exposed: 7500000

Potential causes

Management

• Inadequate Content Moderation: Platforms fail to proactively detect and block deepfake scam accounts.

Technology

• Highly Accessible AI Tools: AI tools have become affordable and easy for scammers to use.
• Improved Deepfake Realism: High quality video and audio make fakes hard to distinguish from reality.
• Convincing Face and Voice Sync: Realistic lip-syncing and blinking increase the credibility of scams.

Data Inputs

• Media of Public Figures: Abundant footage of leaders is exploited to train deepfake models.

Human Factors

• Financial Vulnerability: Economic hardship makes victims susceptible to fake aid promises.
• Exploitation of Trust: Victims trust prominent figures, reducing skepticism of fake offers.

Process and Methods

• Overwhelming Scam Volume: The sheer quantity of new scams weekly overburdens fact-checkers.
• Delayed Video Removal: Videos accumulate millions of views before platforms take them down.

Regulatory Environment

• Reactive Law Enforcement: Police arrest suspects only after victims have lost money.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports from multiple credible news sources (AFP, France24, Jakarta Post) consistently describe the same deepfake scam campaign, detailing the mechanics of the fraud, the platforms involved, police arrests, and specific financial figures.
• Ambiguities identified: The specific AI tools or platforms used to generate the deepfakes are not identified.
• Alternative interpretations: None. The reports clearly describe a financially motivated deepfake scam.

A widespread financial scam in Indonesia utilized AI-generated deepfakes of President Prabowo Subianto to defraud citizens across 20 provinces. While the incident represents an ongoing law enforcement challenge and highlights the growing accessibility of synthetic media, its national security impact remains minor as it did not target critical infrastructure, state sovereignty, or classified systems.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: Indonesia
• Alleged perpetrator: Individual criminals

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The proliferation of deepfake scams represents an ongoing, long-term regulatory and societal challenge rather than an immediate national security crisis.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. AI tools were used strictly as assistance to generate synthetic media, while human operators directed the scam and communicated with victims.
• Novelty: Established threat. Deepfake-enabled financial scams and impersonations of high-profile political figures are established methods that have occurred globally.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical harm, kinetic attacks, or threats to critical infrastructure were reported in connection with this incident.
• Information security: Minor. Deepfakes of the President were widely distributed on social media, but the operation was a financially motivated criminal scam rather than a state-sponsored information warfare campaign.
• Sovereignty: Minor. Impersonating the newly elected President to run a scam could indirectly erode public trust in official government communications, but it did not disrupt core government operations.
• Economic security: Minor. The scam targeted individual citizens, resulting in minor individual financial losses (between $15 and $60 each) and did not threaten national economic or technological security.
• Societal stability: Minor. The scam affected victims across 20 provinces, exploiting vulnerable populations, but the situation was managed through standard law enforcement procedures and arrests.