Fake Mark Carney video cost elderly Ontario woman nearly $1 million

An 86-year-old Sault Ste. Marie woman lost close to a million dollars to a deepfake of Prime Minister Mark Carney she saw on Facebook.

She is one of a growing number of Canadians being defrauded by artificial intelligence. Scammers are using AI to fake the faces of people the public trusts, and selling investments that do not exist.

Judy Skene, a retired pharmacist, saw a Facebook ad in July 2025 in which a deepfake of Carney told viewers to put $350 into a cryptocurrency platform, SooToday reported. The video claimed the money would be backed by the Bank of Canada, Skene told CTV News. Carney never made it.

A deepfake is video or audio generated by AI to make a real person appear to say or do something they never did. They are being used to impersonate politicians, celebrities, financial experts and government officials, said Jeff Horncastle, client and communications outreach officer at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

“The advertisement is usually only the first step,” Horncastle said.

Once someone clicks or hands over their contact information, a fraudster may call posing as an investment advisor, Horncastle said. The victim may then be directed to a professional-looking trading platform, encouraged to buy cryptocurrency or asked to hand over remote access to their computer. The platform may display fabricated profits, he said.

Skene’s case followed that pattern. She signed up and paid, and a caller told her the money had already tripled, CTV News reported. The scammers sent her a link that gave them access to her computer, where they found her investments, her longtime friend Pat Probert told SooToday.

Over several months she cashed in a $650,000 registered retirement income fund, mortgaged her Bay Street condo for $300,000 and took a $35,000 cash advance on her credit card, according to SooToday. The scammers promised her $40,000 a month in dividends if she kept investing, SooToday reported.

The deepfake supplies the credibility, but the fraud itself still runs on social engineering, Horncastle said. Fraudsters use the image and voice of someone Canadians recognize to lower their guard.

A local CIBC branch told Skene she was being scammed, Probert told SooToday, and she stayed convinced. The scammers had told her not to tell anyone, because her friends would be angry that she was making so much money.

“It’s not necessarily a new fraud that we’re seeing, it’s the existing types of fraud, but the tactics tend to change,” Horncastle said. The technology, he said, is easily available to almost anyone.

Skene’s case is not unusual. A Toronto man lost $12,000 to a deepfake of former prime minister Justin Trudeau pushing a cryptocurrency platform. He started with $250, kept investing and believed it had grown past $40,000 before he tried to withdraw.

Scams like Skene’s are classified as cryptocurrency investment fraud, part of a broader category that has cost Canadians more than $1.2 billion since 2022, SooToday reported. Most of those losses involve cryptocurrency, digital money that moves online without a bank.

The Prime Minister’s Office referred questions about Carney’s likeness being used in the scams to the office of Evan Solomon, the minister responsible for AI and digital innovation.

Solomon’s office said in a statement that AI can be misused to create “increasingly sophisticated frauds, including deepfake videos, voice cloning and fabricated articles.”

“These scams exploit Canadians’ trust and can have devastating financial consequences,” the statement said. The office said the government is advancing measures on online safety, privacy law and fraud, and that it expects platforms operating in Canada to use emerging technologies responsibly.

Horncastle’s advice is not to try to spot the fake.

Some deepfakes still carry tells, unnatural mouth movements, unusual blinking, mismatched audio, strange lighting. But the technology keeps improving, and people should be careful about assuming they can catch every one, Horncastle said.

“Canadians have to remember that seeing or hearing a trusted person in a video is no longer enough to prove that the message is genuine,” he said.

The safer move, Horncastle said, is to verify the claim itself through an independent source rather than trying to work out whether the video is real. Research the company and the person offering the investment. Do not use the phone number or the link in the ad.

Skene was left with $200, Probert told SooToday. Her mortgage, condo fees and credit cards bounced, and she lost her car.

Cashing in the retirement fund also cost her Old Age Security and her dental coverage, SooToday reported. The benefit ended July 1, and cashing out the fund and her other investments left a tax bill of more than $80,000, with $47,000 still owing in early June, Probert wrote on a fundraising page he set up for her. SooToday reported her only income is a $1,150 monthly Canada Pension Plan payment against $2,300 in expenses.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre does not investigate but supports police who do, Horncastle said, and much of what it sees comes from overseas. Probert told SooToday in early June that Skene’s banks and local police were still investigating. He has been paying for her food and bills, SooToday reported, and his page had raised about $11,800 of a $20,000 goal as of Wednesday.

Her main concern at her age, Skene told SooToday, is “trying to keep myself in this condominium.”