AI Deepfake Videos of Prime Minister Carney Used to Defraud Canadians and Disrupt 2025 Federal Election

During and after the April 2025 Canadian federal election, an extensive AI-enabled disinformation and fraud campaign targeted Canadians using deepfake videos of Prime Minister Mark Carney, CBC journalist Rosemary Barton, CTV news anchors, and Elon Musk.

The campaign had two dimensions. First, a viral deepfake video — created using Fish Audio, a free AI voice cloning tool — falsely depicted Carney announcing that the government would ban vehicles manufactured before 2000. The video, which manipulated authentic footage from a March 27 press conference on tariff response, appeared on TikTok one day before the April 28 election and reached over 3 million views in a single day, spreading to X where it garnered an additional 2.4 million views. Although TikTok labeled the video as AI-generated, it continued to be amplified by influencers even after removal.

Second, a sophisticated network of over 40 Facebook pages and 25+ accounts — managed by operators traced to Ukraine, Indonesia, the United States, Angola, Romania, and Vietnam — ran AI-generated deepfake “news segments” featuring Carney, Barton, and Canadian news anchors to funnel victims into fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms. The scam operated through a multi-step funnel: Facebook ads pushed deepfake CBC and CTV reports to fake news websites, where Canadians were invited to provide contact information and invest a minimum of approximately $350 on platforms with rotating names — CanFirst, QuilCapital, Quantum AI, TokenTact, and others. “Financial advisers” would then pressure victims for larger investments, sometimes depositing small “profits” to build trust before extracting larger sums.

Lynn Phaneuf, a 70-year-old retired teacher from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, lost approximately $3,000 after encountering what appeared to be a CBC News interview with Rosemary Barton and Mark Carney promoting a government-backed crypto opportunity. Saskatchewan’s Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority issued at least four separate investor alerts between June and September 2025, reporting that losses from the QuilCapital scam alone were expected to exceed $1 million.

A critical enabler was Meta’s Canadian news ban under the Online News Act, which removed legitimate news content from Facebook and Instagram. With no real journalism circulating on the platform, AI-generated fake news content faced no competition and appeared authoritative to users unfamiliar with the ban’s effects. Meta removed pages and accounts when flagged by CBC and researchers, but only approximately half of identified scam pages were taken down, and new ones were created daily. Meta’s January 2025 decision to end its fact-checking programs further compounded the problem.

An academic study analyzing 187,778 social media posts during the election period found that 5.86% of election-related images were flagged as deepfakes, with right-leaning users posting deepfakes at a rate of 9.24% compared to 3.87% for left-leaning users. While most deepfakes were benign memes rather than deliberate misinformation, the study confirmed that realistic fabricated images drew higher engagement. No criminal charges related to the scam operation have been reported.