AI fraud

Deepfake and sextortion with synthetic videos

Videos featuring your face in fabricated contexts, blackmail via Telegram, crypto payment demands. Defend with forensics, not silence.

11 min readExpert

Red flags to recognize

Video showing your face in a context you never lived
Blurred face edges, inconsistent eye reflections, distorted teeth
Voice that does not match lip movement
Blackmail via Telegram, Signal or anonymous email with a 48-72h timer
Payment demand in Bitcoin or USDT to disposable wallets
Threat to send to specific contacts (signal your social profile was scraped)
Intense emotional pressure, also shaming family

What to do now

Do not pay: paying increases demands and marks you as 'fillable'
Preserve every message, video, wallet address, Telegram username
Report immediately: cyber-crime units have dedicated sextortion procedures
Notify the platform (Telegram, Instagram, TikTok) for urgent takedown
Lock down your social privacy, reduce face scrapeability
Talk to someone: friend, family, therapist. Shame is the blackmail weapon

Real case

Deepfake sextortion on a minor, Italy 2025

A 16-year-old receives an Instagram message from an unknown female account. After 20 minutes of explicit chat on Snapchat he receives a deepfake video merging his public face (from Instagram posts) with a nude body. Threat: send to all his followers in 6 hours.

The boy pays 350 EUR in Bitcoin. The next day more is demanded. Only then do parents discover the situation and call the cyber-crime unit. The case enters the national anti-sextortion protocol activated in 2024.

Mythos video analysis confirmed deepfake: artefact patterns from a known open-source model, frames with alpha-channel inconsistencies, synthetic audio. The Bitcoin wallet was traced to an exchange that froze the amount. The network was dismantled four months later through related cases.

What Mythos can do on this case

Deepfake video detection: artefacts, sync, blink rate, edge analysis
Audio analysis: spectrogram, formants, TTS micro-pauses
On-chain tracing of destination wallet (Bitcoin / USDT)
Blackmailer profile analysis (Telegram metadata, fingerprint)
Dossier for cyber-crime complaint with digital chain of custody

Next steps

Analyze the video with Mythos Ask Mythos for help with the report