A Filipino domestic worker handed over a year’s worth of savings to a con artist who appeared to her as Dubai’s ruler-in-waiting during live video chats, a deception built entirely on artificial intelligence. AFP reported that the woman, who asked to be identified only as Maria to protect her identity and age, was drawn into believing she had found love with a member of the Emirati royal family.
The person on the other end of her WhatsApp calls looked convincingly like Prince Hamdan bin Mohammed, the Dubai crown prince who writes poetry under the name Fazza. In footage of one call reviewed by AFP, the fabricated figure’s mouth synced to the words being spoken, though the voice did not belong to the actual prince. “Hello beloved,” the voice told Maria. “I really appreciate your love and support.”
The two first crossed paths on a dating platform, after which the exchange shifted to a messaging app where the impostor kept up a relentless stream of affection. “He kept on messaging me even when I was sleeping,” the Filipino domestic worker told AFP, describing the pull she felt. “It felt like there was a love spell that connected our minds.”
Convinced of the romance, Maria was persuaded to send 100,000 pesos (AED 6,000) for documents the scammer described as a marriage certificate and a “royal membership card,” which he promised would land her employment in Dubai. Doubt only set in when he arranged to meet her at a hotel and asked for a further 60,000 pesos (AED 3,600) to cover the reservation. A closer look at his Facebook account, now removed, revealed it was operating out of Nigeria. She severed contact with a blunt parting line: “Go to hell, scammer.”
Reflecting on how the ordeal ended, she said, “Many people told me it’s good I didn’t go crazy after this experience.”
Researchers have traced a portion of these schemes to criminal networks based in Nigeria. The operations lean heavily on the prince’s enormous digital footprint — his more than 17 million Instagram followers — and at times lift his genuine verses to lend credibility. AFP located several Facebook groups masquerading as the royal, a number of them with thousands of members, steering users toward chats on WhatsApp or Telegram.
Those pages circulate doctored yet believable images, among them one of the prince kneeling with a ring and another of him extending a red rose beside the line: “Sweetheart can I get a ‘love you’ on WhatsApp?” Warnings from some commenters flagging the fraud were often drowned out by others replying with hearts and kiss emojis.
Counter-efforts have emerged in response, including an Instagram account named “Do not fall for fake prince” and a change.org petition, “Stop Fazza Scam,” urging the sheikh’s team to warn the public. The petition described operators using Dubai phone numbers to solicit large sums of money, either as donations or marriage certificates, all of which are forged. It added that “Significant payments are requested in banks in countries other than those of victims, sometimes even in crypto currencies, making it harder to trace.”
The impersonation of Sheikh Hamdan is one instance of a wider pattern. French authorities launched a probe last year into a scheme in which fraudsters posed as actor Brad Pitt to defraud a woman of 830,000 euros. According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, consumers worldwide lost $442 billion to scams, including romance fraud, last year.
Which AI systems produced Maria’s live video calls could not be established, though experts caution the underlying technology is advancing quickly. Cornell University’s David Rand told AFP that “The technology is improving rapidly, and it is likely that soon real-time video deepfakes will become better and better,” warning that “Once this happens, it becomes fundamentally impossible to tell whether any not-in-person conversation is real.”
