In August 2025 a coordinated financial fraud campaign which leveraged AI-generated deepfake technology to impersonate Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy, falsely portraying him as endorsing a fictitious government-backed investment platform surfaced across social media platforms. The manipulated video circulated across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, claimed that citizens could earn over ₹1.9 lakh per month by making a one time investment of ₹ 21,000 through an “AI-powered automated smart investing” scheme. To enhance credibility, the campaign also misused images of his wife Mrs Sudha Murty and the Union Finance Minister, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman and cloned Times of India–style news articles, thereby creating a convincing yet fraudulent narrative.
This scam was identified by Athenian Tech through its threat-intelligence platform, Prime, which continuously monitors the Deep Web, Dark Web, Surface Web, social media ad ecosystems, Telegram channels, and cloned-media networks. Prime detected synthetic video assets featuring Narayana Murthy and flagged behavioural indicators that were consistent with deepfake generation and coordinated amplification.
Upon validation, Athenian Tech documented and reported the findings to relevant stakeholders, supporting coordinated takedown actions across scam domains, impersonation websites, paid social media ads, and cloned media pages. The intelligence contributed to broader awareness of deepfake-enabled investment fraud, aiding law enforcement and regulators in addressing a rapidly evolving threat landscape.
