AI Deepfake Scam Costs Belgian Woman €410,000 as Investigation Traces Global Network

A 75-year-old Belgian woman has lost €410,000 after falling victim to a sophisticated AI-generated deepfake video scam, according to an investigation by RTBF. The scam, which used a fabricated video of a well-known television presenter to promote a fake trading platform, has exposed a highly organized criminal network operating across at least five countries under a “fraud as a service” model.

The Victim’s Ordeal

Éliane (a pseudonym), a retired multilingual woman who speaks four languages fluently, first encountered the scam in September 2024 when she saw a social media advertisement featuring Fanny Jandrain, the host of RTBF’s consumer protection program “On n’est pas des pigeons.” The AI-generated deepfake video appeared completely authentic, replicating Jandrain’s voice and facial expressions with startling accuracy as she appeared to endorse a trading platform called Premium Yields.

“It was completely natural. It was Fanny Jandrain. It was completely real,” Éliane told investigators.

After clicking through and making an initial €250 deposit, Éliane was contacted by high-pressure call center operators who showed her convincing but entirely fake investment returns on a professional-looking dashboard. Over time, she was persuaded to sell a house she had owned for more than 50 years and invest the entire proceeds — €410,000. When she finally attempted to withdraw her funds, the platform locked her account and demanded an additional €260,000 in fabricated fees and taxes.

“They harvest lives. They pluck them right under your nose. And that’s hard to swallow,” she said.

Fanny Jandrain, whose image was stolen for the scam, expressed her distress: “Knowing that someone fell for a scam because my image was used… It’s destabilizing. When you see how they manipulate people, you realize it could happen to anyone.”

A Growing Crisis

Éliane is not alone. The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) received approximately 160 consumer reports about Premium Yields-related platforms, with cumulative losses of roughly €3 million in Belgium alone. Christian, a retired civil engineer from Namur, lost €35,000 after being lured by the same scheme. He had hoped to use the profits to help his disabled daughter.

In Bavaria, Germany, prosecutors recorded about 100 cases linked to the same platforms, with losses totaling approximately €4 million. “These 100 complaints represent total losses of about €4 million. That’s just the cases reported in Bavaria,” said Nino Goldbeck, a German prosecutor specializing in cybercrime.

The scale of the problem extends far beyond Europe. According to Chainalysis, an estimated $17 billion was stolen globally in crypto-related scams in 2025. An Interpol threat assessment found that AI-enhanced fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods.

Tracing the Criminal Network

The RTBF investigation, conducted in collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Kazakh investigative media Vlast, traced the scam to a multi-layered criminal enterprise with distinct functions across multiple countries.

Layer 1: The Web Developers — Kazakhstan

At the technical core of the operation are Andrey Siluyanov and Artyom Sadkov, web designers based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Through their companies Kazakhweb and A3 Studio, they created dozens of cloned trading platforms — Premium Yields, Xfer Capital, Finstera, ICL Markets, HashX Capital, and more than 20 others — all sharing the same technical infrastructure.

Layer 2: The Call Centers — Lithuania

Using IP tracing techniques, investigators located the call centers in Klaipėda, Vilnius, and Šiauliai, Lithuania. Operators speaking fluent French, German, and Italian used number spoofing to display UK numbers while calling from Lithuania. Remarkably, Éliane is still contacted daily by scammers attempting to extract another €44,000.

Layer 3: Money Laundering — Cyprus and Beyond

The investigation identified two Cypriot brothers, Pavlos and Kyriacos Mettis, who provided nominee director services for shell companies used to launder stolen funds. Kyriacos Mettis holds 97 roles in 57 companies registered across Europe, Mauritius, and beyond. When confronted by RTBF journalists in Nicosia, Pavlos Mettis admitted to owning 13 companies but could not explain their activities. His brother later acknowledged providing professional nominee services.

Layer 4: The Possible Mastermind — Israel

At the top of the network, investigators found connections to Pini Peter, the former “king of binary options” and founder of SpotOption. Peter, who has been photographed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, faces an $87 million US civil judgment for defrauding American investors. His company Playnance links him to the Mettis brothers, and his former platform Vulkantrade was designed by the same Kazakh web developers behind Premium Yields.

Justice Delayed

Both Belgian victims describe a feeling of abandonment by authorities. Éliane filed a complaint with the Parquet de Nivelles over a year ago but has received no update. “Don’t kid yourself, they don’t move. There hasn’t been a single phone call. They have other fish to fry,” she said, expressing the frustration of being a double victim — first of the scammers, then of a slow-moving justice system.

Christian’s experience illustrates another obstacle. He reported the crime via Police-on-Web in February 2025, but no case was opened for over a year. Only after RTBF’s inquiry did the Parquet de Namur invite him to file a formal complaint — effectively starting from scratch.

German prosecutor Nino Goldbeck warned that these cases are “often considered too complex, too international, too difficult to solve. Many prosecutors’ offices try to close these cases or allocate few resources to them.” He added: “Online fraud is one of the greatest challenges for our societies today… And it will only get worse with artificial intelligence. It’s not just about money. These scams destroy lives. Families break apart. We have even documented several suicides.”

Yet Goldbeck also offered a note of cautious optimism, noting that he has previously recovered nearly €8 million for German victims by seizing criminal assets in coordinated international operations. “It’s never a sprint. It’s always a marathon,” he concluded.

The Bigger Picture

The Premium Yields case exemplifies a broader transformation in organized crime. The “fraud as a service” model allows criminal networks to specialize and scale across borders with industrial efficiency. AI-generated deepfakes have dramatically lowered the barrier to creating convincing fraudulent content, while shell companies and nominee directors in jurisdictions like Cyprus provide impenetrable layers of anonymity.

Investment fraud cost Belgians over €38 million in 2025 alone, according to RTBF reporting. The FSMA has issued repeated warnings about fraudulent trading platforms using celebrity images, but the pace of technological change continues to outstrip regulatory responses.

What’s Next

The investigation highlights the urgent need for stronger international cooperation and better safeguards against AI-powered financial crimes. As deepfake technology becomes increasingly accessible and convincing, experts warn that the scale of such frauds will only grow. For now, Éliane and Christian — like countless other victims across Europe — wait for justice that may never come.

This article is based on the RTBF investigation by Emmanuel Morimont, broadcast on the #Investigation program on May 20, 2026, with contributions from journalists at Vlast (Kazakhstan), SIENA (Lithuania), and Bivol (Bulgaria), coordinated through the OCCRP.