Incident 878: Romance Scammer 'Alla Morgan' Allegedly Exploits Deepfake Technology to Defraud Victim of £17,000

Description: A scammer, or scammers, reportedly used AI-generated deepfake videos and documents to impersonate a fictitious person named "Alla Morgan," allegedly convincing a 77-year-old woman, Nikki MacLeod, to send £17,000 through various payment methods. The deepfakes were allegedly used in establishing credibility so as to enable fraud under the pretense of an online romantic relationship.

Editor Notes: Timeline notes: The fraud was reported to Police Scotland sometime in October 2024. The date of the incident, 12/19/2024, is when the story became public.

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Entities

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Alleged: Unknown deepfake technology developer developed an AI system deployed by scammers and Alla Morgan, which harmed Nikki MacLeod.

Alleged implicated AI system: Unknown deepfake tool

Incident Stats

Incident ID

878

Report Count

Incident Date

2024-12-19

Editors

Daniel Atherton

Applied Taxonomies

MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified

Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

4.3. Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

Risk Domain

Malicious Actors & Misuse

Entity

Human

Timing

Post-deployment

Intent

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Romance scam: I was duped out of £17k by deepfake videos

bbc.com

Woman, 77, 'totally convinced' by deep fake loses £17K in twisted romance scam

lbc.co.uk

'Girlfriend' was an AI-generated fake that conned me out of £17k

dailymail.co.uk

How I fell victim to romance scam using AI deepfake videos and lost £17,000

thetimes.com

Deepfake Romance Scam: Woman Loses Nearly Rs 18 Lakh In Fake Online Relationship, How To Be Safe

timesnownews.com

I was conned out of 17k by 'deepfake' lover - I was convinced they were real

thescottishsun.co.uk

bbc.com · 2024

A victim of an elaborate online romance fraud has told BBC Scotland that she was completely convinced by deepfake videos used to scam her out of £17,000.

Nikki MacLeod, 77, sent gift cards and made bank and Paypal transfers believing she wa…

lbc.co.uk · 2024

Nikki MacLeod, 77, was sent a scammer £17,000 after she was conned by a deep fake in a pretend online romance. Picture: Social media

A 77-year-old woman who was under the impression she was in an online relationship with another woman hande…

dailymail.co.uk · 2024

A retired academic has told how she was conned out of thousands of pounds in an elaborate romance fraud after scammers used artificial intelligence to fake videos and photos.

Nikki MacLeod was lonely after a long-term relationship ended and…

thetimes.com · 2024

A series of deep-fake videos convinced Nikki MacLeod, 77, a former lecturer at Edinburgh University, to send gift cards and make bank and PayPal transfers to what she believed was a real woman with whom she was in an online relationship.

Ma…

timesnownews.com · 2024

A 77-year-old woman from Scotland's Edinburgh lost £17,000 (around Rs 18,06,863) in an online romance scam, the BBC reported. The victim Nikki MacLeod was tricked by deepfake videos and sent gift cards, bank transfer and PayPal payments, th…

thescottishsun.co.uk · 2025

A RETIRED lecturer has told how she was scammed out of £17,000 by a 'deepfake' girlfriend she met online.

Nikki MacLeod, 77, from Edinburgh, lost the huge sum of money to a romance scammer who used AI-generated videos to send convincing mes…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.