THE general vulnerability of the Fijian public to online scams was again evident in the public response to a fake video of Reserve Bank of Fiji (RBF) Governor Ariff Ali, which began circulating on social media in July this year.In the video, generated by online scammers using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Mr Ali’s footage had been manipulated to portray him as promoting an investment platform via local television news channel Fiji One News, inviting the public to join the platform for as little as $550 after which they can earn $18,000 in a month.
Responding to questions from this newspaper this week, RBF, who had last week intensified its public awareness campaign on the scam, said it had received numerous queries from members of the public on how to join the scheme.
“We have witnessed the vulnerability of the Fijian public to such scams when the e-Bay scheme was circulating, and the RBF was fully aware that a lot of uninformed members of the public would be lured to the scheme advertised by the video,” RBF acting deputy Governor Vilimaina Dakai said.
“The numerous enquiries received from when the video started circulating confirmed that interest on the fake scam has been established and was increasing.
“With the video using AI-generated audio-visuals, tendency to believe its authenticity was high.”
Ms Dakai said the lack of public awareness was reflected in people not being able to identify various indicators of manipulation such as disproportionate facial features relative to the body, inconsistent neck-to-shirt alignment, occasional fading of neck and audio characteristics that did not match the Governor’s known speech patterns as well as his accent.
“The scheme was stating $18,000 return on a monthly basis for $550 investment. This translates to a return of over 3000% a month which is just not realistic for any investment.
“The Fijian public need to understand that any scheme that offers such exorbitant returns considered ‘too good to be true’ are not real.
“The extent of no-awareness was also observed in some members of the public arguing that ‘if it was not true, then why FijiTV was reporting it’.
“The RBF is grateful to FijiTV for also creating awareness that the video was fake,” Ms Dakai said.
She said central bank governors around the world have been targets of similar investment scams, with recent cases recorded in Sri Lanka, India, Romania, Barbados, Luxemburg, Jamaica, Namibia and the Bahamas.