Boardroom Talk: Deepfakes, boiler rooms, and bully tactics – The truth about FXSI

In this episode of Boardroom Talk, BizNews editor Alec Hogg exposes the AI-powered FXSI scam that used deepfake footage of him and President Cyril Ramaphosa on a fake Carte Blanche set to lure unsuspecting South Africans into a fraudulent trading scheme. After BizNews interviewed an anonymous victim who lost more than R24,000, lawyers claiming to act for FXSI demanded the article and podcast be removed. Hogg’s response: no.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Listen here.BizNews tribe member duped by deepfake Alec Hogg on 'Carte Blanche' loses R24,000 in AI-powered scam.Edited transcript of the Boardroom Talk.Hello and a warm welcome to Boardroom Talk. I’m Alec Hogg.Well, usually on this podcast, we delve into the macroeconomic shifts shaping our world, the boardroom manoeuvres of top listed companies here and abroad, or the political currents that are driving South Africa’s future. But today we’re doing something different.Today we’re pulling back a curtain on a deeply sinister, highly organised threat that is targeting you, our BizNews tribe. It’s a story about cutting-edge technology being used for base criminality. It’s a story about a heartbreaking betrayal of trust. And, as of last night, it’s a story about heavy-handed legal bullying that attempts to silence the truth and silence us.If you follow BizNews regularly, you might have seen a rather explosive advertisement that circulated online recently. In it, you would have seen me on the set of an apparent Carte Blanche, engaged in a heated live studio debate with President Cyril Ramaphosa.In the video, I supposedly accused the President of ruining the country while simultaneously claiming he is trying to stop ordinary South Africans from investing in a highly lucrative, foolproof trading system called FXSI.It’s dramatic, it’s controversial, and it is entirely, 100% fake.What you’re seeing in those advertisements is a deepfake, a piece of synthetic media generated by artificial intelligence. The scammers behind FXSI have stolen my face and my reputation, and fabricated a confrontation with the head of state to lend their criminal enterprise a veneer of credibility.Why? Because they know the business community trusts us. They know that if Alec Hogg appears to be endorsing some financial product, it will carry weight. And they’ve weaponised that trust to empty the bank accounts of unsuspecting, hardworking South Africans.On the 1st of May, we published an interview on BizNews Radio and on BizNews.com. The headline read: “BizNews tribe member duped by deepfake Alec Hogg on Carte Blanche loses R24,000 in AI-powered scam.”In that piece, my colleague, Kerry Lanaghan, interviewed an elderly member of our community who had fallen victim to this exact trap. This person had contacted us and asked why it was that we were involving ourselves with this awful organisation.But because they were deeply embarrassed and feared further targeted harassment, they agreed to speak to us on the record on one strict condition: anonymity. So we altered their voice to protect their identity. That’s a standard, fundamental journalistic practice when dealing with vulnerable victims of crime.Their story is a masterclass in how these modern boiler rooms operate.After clicking on that fabricated video of the President and me, our community member was directed to the FXSI website. They filled in a few details, and almost immediately the bombardment began. Their phone rang incessantly.On the other end was a slick-talking account manager who introduced himself as Leonardo de Santos. Yeah, right. Claiming to be from Zurich, Switzerland. Yeah, right. Leonardo had 13 years of experience, he said, and promised the world.He convinced our tribe member to deposit an initial amount of R4,100. The other scam we helped uncover, in which my colleague Chris Steyn was very involved, Banxso, also required a deposit of R4,100. I’d love someone in the financial system to tell us what’s so significant about that number. There’s got to be some reason.Anyhow, once the money was in, the psychological manipulation ramped up. Leonardo instructed our tribe member to buy foreign currencies, converting rand to euros and dollars, and then pushed them into buying gold.For a few days, the fictitious online dashboard looked quite fantastic. The victim thought they were making a profit. But then the trap snapped shut.We had experience of this with Banxso. One of the victims spoke with us. She lost R400,000 and had no way of ever getting it back, even though she found their offices, went in there, caused a ruckus, but was ejected. You can listen to that interview on BizNews. The office, by the way, was in downtown Cape Town. This one apparently is in Bryanston. But I say apparently because, well, try and find it.Getting back to the latest issue, the account suddenly plunged into the red and Leonardo from Zurich was back on the phone, aggressively demanding that the victim, a member of our tribe, immediately deposit another R25,000 to get their supposed margin on the trades, which had gone wrong, back up from 56%, where it was at the time, to 70%, so they could save their investment.By this point, our community member had lost over R24,000 in total — money that clearly, from our interactions, they couldn’t afford to lose.They told Leonardo they just wanted to close the account and take whatever money was left. The response? If you want your money back, you have to pay us R25,000 more first.It’s the oldest trick in the scammers’ playbook, updated with AI algorithms and fake Swiss addresses.When the victim refused to pay more and realised they had been taken for a ride, the once-polite account manager turned vicious, accusing the victim of being rude and even threatening legal action against them because they had called the person a swine. I would have called them something a little stronger.And speaking of legal action, that brings us to yesterday.At BizNews, we expose the truth. We serve our readers. We warn our community. We shine a light into the dark corners of the financial world in particular. And the cockroaches inevitably scurry.Last night, my colleague Kerry Lanaghan received an email marked urgent. Attached was a formal letter of demand from a law firm in Tyrwhitt Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg, called FM Inc. Attorneys. It was signed by Mr Faizel Mahomed.Mr Mohammed writes that his firm is acting on behalf of FXSI. And let me read to you directly from this document, which was dated the 4th of May.The letter refers to our article from Friday. It notes that we attached a 15-minute interview with an “unknown gentleman” who detailed his experience with FXSI. Then the legal gymnastics begin.Mr Mohammed writes, quote:“As per our client’s instruction, the person who claims to have lost money due to an alleged scam is not their client.” Unquote.He continues, quote:“This catastrophic negligence by BizNews, and in particular Kerry Lanaghan, renders the entire interview and version of events void and unlawful. This gentleman has clearly impersonated another individual as if he was, in fact, the person who had this alleged experience.” Unquote.So let’s just pause and unpack the breathtaking absurdity of Mr Mahomed’s statement.A syndicate operates a fraudulent website. They use a highly illegal, fabricated deepfake video of a journalist and the President to steal money from pensioners. We interview a victim, disguising their voice to protect them from further harassment from these exact criminals. And the lawyers for the syndicate accuse us of catastrophic negligence because we didn’t hand over the victim’s true identity to the people who robbed them.The letter goes on to accuse Kerry Lanaghan of failing to do “vital due diligence in verifying who the person being interviewed was”, claiming this has caused FXSI serious reputational and financial harm.And then comes the ultimatum, paragraph eight, and I quote:“We therefore, on behalf of our client, demand that the article and the interview be removed within 24 hours from the timestamp on the email to which this letter is attached.” Unquote.Paragraph nine threatens that if we refuse, they hold instructions to, quote, “take action on any forum we see fit,” unquote, reserving their rights to claim damages against BizNews and Kerry Lanaghan.If litigation in South Africa were not so prohibitively expensive, my immediate response to Mr Mahomed and his clients would have been brief, colourful, and thoroughly unprintable.Members of the legal fraternity may recall the famous 1971 British case of Arkell v Pressdram. If they do, they’ll get the drift. Similarly, my much-beloved former editor, Richard Rolfe, wrote back to a threatening gold coin scammer, Eli Levine, who was wanting to get him to recant, using the law as part of his approach. His response: “Sod off. Rude letter to follow.” Except that Richard didn’t say “sod”.But at BizNews, we are professionals. So allow me to deliver our formal response to FXSI, to FM Inc. Attorneys, and to anyone else running these offshore, unregulated boiler rooms.No. We will not remove the article. We will not take down the podcast. We will not be bullied, intimidated, or silenced by legal threats built on a foundation of absolute nonsense.Kerry Lanaghan is an exceptional journalist. She performed exactly the due diligence required by speaking directly to the victim, reviewing the timeline of events, and protecting her source.The assertion that our anonymous victim was impersonating someone else is a desperate, laughable attempt to deflect from the fact that FXSI’s business model relies on deceit.Let me be crystal clear. The harm to FXSI’s reputation was not caused by Kerry Lanaghan. It was caused by FXSI using my stolen identity to peddle a scam.To Mr Faizel Mahomed at FM Inc. Attorneys, I’m sure you’re just doing your job, or the one this client instructed you to do, shameful as it is. But I would urge you, as an officer of the court, to look very closely at the entity that’s paying your invoices.Ask yourself if you truly want your firm’s letterhead associated with an operation that uses AI deepfakes of the South African President to separate the elderly from their retirement savings.If that doesn’t gel, consider too that all proceeds of crime will be recouped by the authorities in due course. Legal bills too.And to the BizNewss tribe, this is why we do what we do. The internet is becoming an increasingly treacherous place. The technology used to create that fake video of me on Carte Blanche will only get cheaper, faster, and more convincing.As our anonymous guest warned at the end of the interview, you can no longer blindly believe what you see online.If you see an advert promising guaranteed outsized returns with my face on it, Elon Musk’s face on it, Johann Rupert’s face on it, run the other way.If an account manager from Zurich or London phones you relentlessly demanding deposits into foreign accounts, put the phone down.And if you are ever asked to pay money to withdraw your own money, you are being scammed.We will keep this story on the homepage. We will keep fighting for the truth. And if FXSI wants to drag BizNews into a courtroom to debate the legality of their deepfake President Ramaphosa adverts, boy, do I welcome it.We have a very large file. We’re feisty and we’re ready.Thank you for listening. Please share this episode with your friends, your parents, and anyone who might be vulnerable to these sophisticated traps. Stay vigilant, stay rational, and look after the money you’ve worked so hard to build.I’m Alec Hogg, and this has been Boardroom Talk..Download and read the letter of demand from FXSI below

Boardroom Talk: Deepfakes, boiler rooms, and bully tactics – The truth about FXSI

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