In the first known case of successful financial scamming via audio deep fakes, cybercrooks were able to create a near-perfect impersonation of a chief executive's voice – and then used the audio to fool his company into transferring $243,000 to their bank account. A deep fake is a plausible video or audio impersonation of someone, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Security experts say that the incident, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, sets a dangerous precedent. "In the identity-verification industry, we're seeing more and more artificial intelligence-based identity fraud than ever before," David Thomas, CEO of identity verification company Evident, told Threatpost. "As a business, it's no longer enough to just trust that someone is who they say they are. Individuals and businesses are just now beginning to understand how important identity verification is. Especially in the new era of deep fakes, it's no longer just enough to trust a phone call or a video file."