Dissected: How scammers built a fake Zoom call from real videos of Singapore PM Wong and other leaders

SINGAPORE, 22 AUGUST 2026 —

Analysis of full footage shared exclusively with CNA found that the scammers used obscure or dated YouTube videos of high-profile figures, alongside other deceptive techniques, to make their fabricated virtual event convincing.

SINGAPORE: In April 2022, then-Finance Minister Lawrence Wong dialled into a widely reported government press conference via video link from the United States, to announce details of the easing of Singapore’s COVID-19 pandemic safety measures.

Four years later, scammers would use footage from that call to convince an unsuspecting individual that Mr Wong, now Singapore's Prime Minister, was among a group of Singaporean and global leaders seeking financial help to stabilise trade flows through the conflict-ridden Strait of Hormuz.

The victim had found himself in a fake Zoom conference that was spliced together using footage not just of Mr Wong, but also President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah, and several other prominent political and financial figures. The victim ended up transferring at least S$4.9 million to the scammers, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said in May.

CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less A full recording of the Zoom call was shared exclusively with CNA by SPF.

CNA’s analysis uncovered a number of previously unreported techniques used to pull off the scam, chief among them the extensive usage of real but obscure videos that remain accessible on YouTube. The scammers, in other words, did not create their cast of Zoom characters from scratch. Instead, they constructed a live, convincing hoax almost entirely using real videos that were mixed with doctored audio, stolen identities and graphic overlays.

Nine real, high-profile individuals or institutions were presented as participants in the scam call. One was Ms Indranee, who appeared in the call claiming that the “urgency of coordinated action” was needed to ensure “free and secure navigation through the Strait of Hormuz”.

CNA’s investigation found that the footage of Ms Indranee was in fact taken from a March 2023 interview with radio station Money FM 89.3, where the Second Minister for Finance and National Development discussed housing and urban planning initiatives. For the Zoom scam, audio from that real interview was replaced with fake or manipulated speech, but the video of Ms Indranee herself - including her hand gestures and head movements - appeared unedited.

Subsequent analysis confirmed that at least seven visual segments in the Zoom scam were extracted from YouTube videos that are still publicly accessible. These videos are either dated or have low view counts. Among these was footage of Mr Tharman in a virtual panel, hosted by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and uploaded in November 2020 – three years before he became president.

The original video of Mr Tharman’s panel had fewer than 200 views, as of August 2026. The clip of Ms Indranee’s interview on Money FM 89.3 had just over 350 views. While the video that contained Mr Wong’s COVID-19 announcement had around 30,000 views, the specific sequence used by the scammers starts at around the 41-minute mark of the hour-long video – making it hard for casual viewers to pinpoint its origin.

Associate Professor Hannah Yee-Fen Lim, AI governance lead at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s Global Institute of Finance, Technology and Society, said the little-watched nature of the source videos meant victims were less likely to have seen them – which in turn could have reduced the suspicion that they were fake.

She added that it was also much cheaper and easier to use publicly available footage than to generate the likeness of a person using AI. The scammers took several steps to prevent elements in the real footage from giving them away, particularly logos identifying their original publishers. For instance, the original footage of Ms Indranee and Mr Wong bore the watermarks of Money FM 89.3 and The Straits Times respectively, where the footage was sourced.

In both cases, the watermarks were positioned in the top-right corner of the frame. To mask these, the scammers overlaid the logos with a “Live Zoom Recording” graphic. This tactic likely went unnoticed by the victim, but authentic Zoom calls do not contain such logos inside individual participant screens. Instead, Zoom displays recording indicators on the wider meeting and app interface.

As with Ms Indranee’s case, the original audio tracks in most clips were replaced with synthetic speech, possibly either AI-generated or recorded by another person and digitally altered to mimic the public figures’ voices. Analysis of the audio clips using a deepfake detection tool found they were likely manipulated. This resulted in lip movements visibly not lining up with speech, a finding that was initially disclosed by the SPF as well.

While this inconsistency may be a clear sign that a video is inauthentic, Assoc Prof Lim said victims may not be paying close attention if they are “already coerced into fear or some other strong emotions”. There was also a scene in the fake Zoom call which CNA could not trace to any source videos.

In a 15-second sequence near the start of the recording, Mr Wong and Ms Indranee appear seated next to each other, before Mr Wong stands and leaves to take a phone call. A deepfake detection tool flagged that this portion was likely manipulated.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Centre for Trusted Internet and Community also examined the segment for CNA, and said it may have been produced by using AI to stitch separate pieces of real footage together, or by feeding real footage into an AI model to generate a new video altogether. The one original audio track which the scammers likely left untouched featured Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.

Related: Sea · Singapore