#FactCheck - "Deepfake Video Falsely Claims Justin Trudeau Endorses Investment Project”

Executive Summary:

The rise in cybercrime targeting vulnerable individuals, particularly students and their families, has reached alarming levels. Impersonation scams, where fraudsters pose as Law Enforcement Officers, have become increasingly sophisticated, exploiting fear, urgency, and social stigma. This report delves into recent incidents of ransom scams involving fake CBI officers, highlighting the execution methods, psychological impact on victims, and preventive measures. The goal is to raise public awareness and equip individuals with the knowledge needed to protect themselves from such fraudulent activities.

Introduction:

Cybercriminals are evolving their tactics, with impersonation and social engineering at the forefront. Scams involving fake law enforcement officers have become rampant, preying on the fear of legal repercussions and the desire to protect loved ones. This report examines incidents where scammers impersonated CBI officers to extort money from families of students, emphasizing the urgent need for awareness, verification, and preventive measures.

Case Study:

This case study explains how the scammers impersonate themselves for the money targeting students' families. 

Targets receive calls from scammers posing as CBI officers. Mostly the families of students are targeted by the fraudsters using sophisticated impersonation and emotional manipulation tactics. In our case study, the targets received calls  from  unknown international numbers, falsely claiming that the students, along with their friends, were involved in a fabricated rape case. The parents get calls during school or college hours, a time when it is particularly difficult and chaotic for parents to reach their children, adding to the panic and sense of urgency. The scammers manipulate the parents by stating that, due to the students' clean records, they are not officially arrested but would face severe legal consequences unless a sum of money is paid immediately. 

Although in these specific cases, the parents did not pay the money, many parents in our country fall victim to such scams, paying large sums out of fear and desperation to protect their children’s futures. The fear of legal repercussions, social stigma, and the potential damage to the students' reputations, the scammers used high-pressure tactics to force compliance. 

These incidents may  result in significant financial losses, emotional trauma, and a profound loss of trust in communication channels and authorities. This underscores the urgent need for awareness, verification of authority, and prompt reporting of such scams to prevent further victimisation

Modus Operandi:

• Caller ID Spoofing: The scammer used a unknown  number and spoofing techniques to mimic a legitimate law enforcement authority.
• Fear Induction: The fraudster played on the family's fear of social stigma, manipulating them into compliance through emotional blackmail.

Analysis:

Our research found that the unknown international numbers used in these scams are not real but are puppet numbers often used for prank calls and fraudulent activities. This incident also raises concerns about data breaches, as the scammers accurately recited students' details, including names and their parents' information, adding a layer of credibility and increasing the pressure on the victims. These incidents result in significant financial losses, emotional trauma, and a profound loss of trust in communication channels and authorities.

Impact on Victims:

• Financial and Psychological Losses: The family may face substantial financial losses, coupled with emotional and psychological distress.
• Loss of Trust in Authorities: Such scams undermine trust in official communication and law enforcement channels.
• Exploitation of Fear and Urgency: Scammers prey on emotions such as fear, urgency, and social stigma to manipulate victims.
• Sophisticated Impersonation Techniques: Using caller ID spoofing, Virtual/Temporary numbers and impersonation of Law Enforcement Officers adds credibility to the scam.
• Lack of Verification: Victims often do not verify the caller's identity, leading to successful scams.
• Significant Psychological Impact: Beyond financial losses, these scams cause lasting emotional trauma and distrust in institutions.

Recommendations:

• Cross-Verification: Always cross-verify with official sources before acting on such claims. Always contact official numbers listed on trusted Government websites to verify any claims made by callers posing as law enforcement.
• Promote Awareness: Educational institutions should conduct regular awareness programs to help students and families recognize and respond to scams.
• Encourage Prompt Reporting: Reporting such incidents to authorities can help track scammers and prevent future cases. Encourage victims to report incidents promptly to local authorities and cybercrime units.
• Enhance Public Awareness: Continuous public awareness campaigns are essential to educate people about the risks and signs of impersonation scams.
• Educational Outreach: Schools and colleges should include Cybersecurity awareness as part of their curriculum, focusing on identifying and responding to scams.
• Parental Guidance and Support: Parents should be encouraged to discuss online safety and scam tactics with their children regularly, fostering a vigilant mindset.

Conclusion:

The rise of impersonation scams targeting students and their families is a growing concern that demands immediate attention. By raising awareness, encouraging verification of claims, and promoting proactive reporting, we can protect vulnerable individuals from falling victim to these manipulative and harmful tactics. It is high time for the  authorities, educational institutions, and the public to collaborate in combating these scams and safeguarding our communities. Strengthening data protection measures and enhancing public education on the importance of verifying claims can significantly reduce the impact of these fraudulent schemes and prevent further victimisation.

‍

Introduction

‍

Two of the most influential voices offered strikingly divergent visions of humanity’s technological future in May 2026. On one side of the equation was Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who spoke of a future in which intelligence would be a "service like  electricity or water," available on a metered basis and powered by massive AI infrastructure. On the other side was Leo XIV, the Pope of the Catholic Church, whose encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, presented the Church's most substantial response to AI, presenting the technology not simply as a technical innovation but also as a crucial moral, social, and civilizational challenge.

The differences in their views run much deeper than merely those regarding control and development. At issue is a conflict in understanding intelligence, the purpose of technology, and the dignity of man. While Altman saw intelligence as an abundant economic factor, one that could be produced, distributed, and consumed, Leo XIV emphasized that intelligence is indissociable from the person and that we should be wary of turning human potential into mere merchandise. Their clash of visions can essentially be understood as two different answers to the question: What is a human being, and to whose service should technology be devoted?

‍

Intelligence as Infrastructure

‍

Altman implies that artificial intelligence will follow the trajectory of electricity in industrial society, where the utility became available everywhere as part of the bedrock of society. The ultimate goal is to generate abundance. Cognitive ability will become cheaper and more readily available until it is so inexpensive that it is built into everything.

From the perspective of the business, this is compelling. In many ways modern AI already has infrastructure-like properties. Programmers, businesses, governments, and even individuals are using intelligence as a commodity delivered by a centralized platform and API in a way similar to how previous generations would have used the electricity grid. Altman is essentially predicting that this trend will reach its ultimate form, where intelligence becomes a utility.

There are several assumptions inherent in this utility metaphor; however, utilities are never neutral technologies; they are all forms of governance, ownership, and control. It is not merely the resource being delivered that makes electricity grids, telephone systems, and water infrastructure powerful but the institutions that mediate access to those resources. In Altman's statement "people will buy it from us," there is a political question inherent: Who does the infrastructure of cognition belong to?

Altman himself is also concerned with these issues, often reiterating that this technology could lead to an unprecedented concentration of power and wealth. Yet this concern is a paradox, as truly democratized artificial intelligence does not appear possible without immense capital investment, colossal data centers, proprietary models, and a monopolization of talent. The path to making intelligence universally available appears to lie through unprecedented centralization.

‍

The Vatican's Response: Beyond Technology

‍

Magnifica Humanitas approaches this from a different perspective. It is not, fundamentally, a document on AI policy but on social philosophy, rooted in the Catholic tradition of social teaching. Just as Rerum Novarum, published in 1891, had explored the social implications of industrial capitalism, Leo XIV views AI as a new juncture in humankind's engagement with technology and power.

Two biblical images are recurring throughout the encyclical: Babel and Jerusalem. Babel, the archetype of technical ambition without purpose or moral intent, is an effort to reorder and recenter human society based on conformity, centralization, and the delusion of self-sufficiency. Jerusalem, rebuilt under Nehemiah, is an image of collective reconstruction based on participation and responsibility.

The symbolic weight is critical. Leo XIV is not arguing that technology in itself is inherently dangerous. He is, rather, suggesting that the tools of technology will inherently contain and perpetuate whatever values, incentives, and priorities of the architects and wielders of these technologies. The question is not therefore whether AI should exist, but rather whether it increases human flourishing or enhances systems of control.

This provides what is likely the most significant realization within the encyclical that AI and human intelligence are categories distinct in kind, not in degree. AI can simulate, calculate, and compute, but it can never possess awareness, ethical responsibility, embodiment, or meaningful relationships. As such, decisions impacting human life can no longer be deferred to algorithms in a manner that negates the human good.

‍

The Problem of Power

‍

The most evident clash between Altman's vision and Magnifica Humanitas lies in power dynamics.

The utility model of Altman places the assumption that intelligence can be centrally controlled and widely disseminated. However, the Vatican perceives major political consequences from the concentration of cognitive ability. According to the encyclical, this kind of concentration can lead to major political problems because small groups are given immense power over the economy, public debate, and democracy by possessing the necessary control over data, computation, and the network.

This idea is becoming more prominent in recent research. Experts like Kate Crawford, for instance, have described AI as 'a registry of power' in which systems build up hierarchies of social, political, and economic power. Digital colonialism scholars also show that the control of the network of intelligence under a few transnational corporations may diminish power that would otherwise reside with local authorities and democratic institutions.

The problem, seen from this point of view, does not simply address technology but sovereignty itself. If intelligence is provided as a metered service within private platforms, the access to knowledge, reason, and decision-making tools might rest with entities outside the public sphere, unconcerned with democracy.

The Vatican's solution relies on the principle of subsidiarity; decisions should be taken at the lowest possible levels, respecting the autonomy of individuals, communities, and local institutions. This principle directly contradicts the proposals that see cognitive infrastructure located within a few multinational organizations.

‍

The Hidden Labour Behind AI

‍

A particularly important segment of Magnifica Humanitas addresses the invisible labor of the AI economy. 

While discourse on AI frequently conceptualizes it as an intangible or ethereal technology residing within "the cloud," the opposite is in fact the case. AI relies on the unseen labors of data annotators, content moderators, miners harvesting rare earth metals, construction workers creating data centers, and technicians repairing digital infrastructure. In many cases, these workers exist in marginal situations; investigations have revealed poor wages, minimal rights, and psychologically damaging working conditions, especially for content moderators and data annotators in the Global South. Critics contend that the AI of today exists on the backbone of an unacknowledged global workforce that is shielded from consumers of AI technology. In the encyclical, this idea of the AI economy is framed in terms of human dignity, the standard by which all progress, technological or otherwise, must be measured. Progress cannot be defined solely in terms of efficiency and productivity but must be defined by its consequences for workers, society, and human relationships. While the technology of AI may confer tremendous value to a few, it must not do so at the expense of the humanity of others. It gives a key critique of Altman’s utility model that the appeal of abundant intelligence often focuses on products while neglecting the social and material conditions in which it is produced.

‍

A Clash of Anthropologies

‍

The deepest philosophical disagreement of Altman's and Leo XIV's is over anthropology, i.e., who human beings actually are. 

Altman’s view presumes an ability to quantify and allocate the human capacity for intelligence. The more intelligent the society, the better the society; and intelligence becomes the prime causal factor whose production must be maximized by the machine.

The Vatican rejects this fundamental principle. According to the argument of Magnifica Humanitas, human value is not located in intelligent productivity or efficiency or economic productivity. Dignity is non-conditional and cannot be reduced to measures of performance. One has dignity not because one can compute, produce, and optimize, but because one is a person.

The implications of this difference are vast. If intelligence is principally treated as an economic asset, then humans will constantly have to deal with being judged as being of greater or lesser use compared to the machine. If dignity is intrinsic, machines must remain instruments of the flourishing of the human, irrespective of machine efficiency. In sum, this is not a debate over machines. It is a debate over whether society is going to be defined according to an ideology of optimization or an ideology of humanity.

‍

Conclusion

‍

The juxtaposition of Sam Altman’s model of utility and Leo XIV’s idea of Magnifica Humanitas defines one of the key intellectual arguments of our times. Altman presents a vision of abundance, efficiency, and humanly impossible intellectual capacity. Leo XIV represents what happens when intelligence is divorced from the demands of ethics, democracy, and human dignity; when the demands they represent only contribute to its ultimate capacity to wound the needs it serves. 

It is not whether we will build machines more and more intelligent; it is what politics and values will govern these machines. When intelligence becomes a service, whose interests will govern the machine, who will write the rules, and who will be the direct beneficiaries? When dignity is the source from which man and machine alike emerge, the service must not be judged on what the machine does best but on what it can do for man. The ultimate question is whether we will be able to maintain a view of ourselves that is larger than just our capacity to engineer.

‍

References:

1. Atlas of AI, Crawford, Kate. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.
2. Pope Leo XIV. Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Vatican City: Holy See, 2026.
3. Pope Leo XIII. Rerum Novarum. Vatican City: Holy See, 1891.
4. Pope John Paul II. Laborem Exercens. Vatican City: Holy See, 1981.
5. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Dignitas Infinita. Vatican City: Holy See, 2024.
6. International Theological Commission. Quo Vadis, Humanitas? Thinking About Christian Anthropology in the Face of Some Scenarios on the Future of Humanity. Vatican City, 2026.
7. Nick Lichtenberg. "Sam Altman Admits AI Is Killing the Labor-Capital Balance—and Says Nobody Knows What to Do About It." Fortune, 12 March 2026.

‍

Introduction

According to the Finance Ministry's data, the incidence of domestic Unified Payment Interface (UPI) fraud rose by 85% in FY 2023-24 compared to FY 2022-23. Further, as of September of FY 2024-25, 6.32 lakh fraud cases had been already reported, amounting to Rs 485 crore. The data was shared on 25th November 2024, by the Finance Ministry in response to a question in Lok Sabha’s winter session about the fraud in UPI transactions during the past three fiscal years.

Statistics

‍

UPI Frauds and Government's Countermeasures 

On the query as to measures taken by the government for safe and secure UPI transactions and prevention of fraud in the transactions, the ministry has highlighted the measures as follows: 

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has launched the Central Payment Fraud Information Registry (CPFIR), a web-based tool for reporting payment-related frauds, operational since March 2020, and it requires requiring all Regulated Entities (RE) to report payment-related frauds to the said CPFIR.

• The Government, RBI, and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) have implemented various measures to prevent payment-related frauds, including UPI transaction frauds. These include device binding, two-factor authentication through PIN, daily transaction limits, and limits on use cases.
• Further, NPCI offers a fraud monitoring solution for banks, enabling them to alert and decline transactions using AI/ML models. RBI and banks are also promoting awareness through SMS, radio, and publicity on 'cyber-crime prevention'.
• The Ministry of Home Affairs has launched a National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) (www.cybercrime.gov.in) and a National Cybercrime Helpline Number 1930 to help citizens report cyber incidents, including financial fraud. Customers can also report fraud on the official websites of their bank or bank branches.
• The Department of Telecommunications has introduced the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) and 'Chakshu' facility on the Sanchar Saathi portal, enabling citizens to report suspected fraud messages via call, SMS, or WhatsApp.

Conclusion  

UPI is India's most popular digital payment method.  As of June 2024, there are around 350 million active users of the UPI in India. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) report indicates that ‘Online Financial Fraud’, a cyber crime category under NCRP, is the most prevalent among others. The rise of financial fraud, particularly UPI fraud is cause for alarm, the scammers use sophisticated strategies to deceive victims. It is high time for netizens to exercise caution and care with their personal and financial information, stay aware of common tactics used by fraudsters, and adhere to best security practices for secure transactions and the safe use of UPI services.

References

• https://sansad.in/getFile/loksabhaquestions/annex/183/AU211_sk53e3.pdf?source=pqals

‍