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Three Men Charged With Using AI to Impersonate CEOs and Lawyers in $129 Million Fraud, DOJ Says

Bot Mutiny | November 7, 2026

Three men have been charged in the Southern District of New York with using artificial intelligence to impersonate company chief executives and law-firm attorneys on calls, to trick employees into wiring money in a scheme prosecutors say took about $129 million. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced the unsealed indictment on November 5, 2026. The charges are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Who is charged

The indictment names Jacob Soall, Sharon Hazan and Guy Sheetrit. According to the Justice Department release, Soall was arrested in Spain on June 17, 2026, Hazan was arrested in Spain on August 5, 2026, and Sheetrit was arrested in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2026. Extradition requests for all three are pending.

The release gives their ages as 41, 54 and 42. Each faces seven counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, two counts of aggravated identity theft, money laundering conspiracy and two counts of money laundering. The release lists a maximum of 20 years for each of the two conspiracy counts, the wire fraud count and the money laundering counts, and two years for each aggravated identity theft count.

How the scheme allegedly worked

Prosecutors say that between 2024 and 2026 the three men and their co-conspirators used what the release calls "super intelligence" ("SI") to imitate the voices or images of corporate executives and of attorneys at major law firms. The release does not use the term artificial intelligence, and it does not name the tools used; The Record and the Guardian describe the technology as AI.

According to the indictment as described by the office, the conspirators would contact an employee at a target company while pretending to be its CEO, say they needed help with a confidential financial transaction, and use the technology to mimic the CEO's voice or image on calls. The employee would then be told to contact lawyers at large international law firms who were supposedly working on the same deal. Those lawyers were also impersonated, and one of them would ultimately direct the employee to wire a large sum to an account controlled by the conspirators.

The release says Soall mainly played the part of United Kingdom attorneys and kept a handwritten script titled "Lawyer Call," which included language meant to convince employees not to discuss the communications with colleagues. Hazan and Sheetrit are alleged to have laundered the proceeds. The release quotes Hazan as boasting that he had been laundering money since 1994, that he had laundered over $400 million in the past three years, and that he was "number one all over the world" among professional money launderers.

The money

The release alleges the scheme took more than $129 million from companies in the United States and elsewhere. It itemizes six victims: $4,829,580 from a hospital system headquartered in Missouri, $2,684,580 from a bank in Rhode Island, $2,968,497 from a hospital system in California, $11,578,474 from a financial technology company in the United Kingdom, $4,639,918 from a mutual fund company in Massachusetts and $5,242,747 from a pet food company in Florida. By our arithmetic, those six amounts add up to about $31.9 million, so most of the alleged total is not itemized in the release.

Wire transfers went to accounts controlled by conspirators in the United States, Spain, Portugal, Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Austria, Slovakia and China, the release says. Once the money arrived, it was converted into cryptocurrency, which prosecutors allege was done to conceal its source, ownership and control.

The release's opening describes a scheme to defraud companies of "more than $100 million" and later puts the total at "more than $129 million." U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald is quoted as saying that, as alleged, the defendants deceived executives into sending "approximately $129 million." Where news reports differ from the release on details, such as how the victim companies are described, we have followed the release.

What officials said

"SI technology offers tremendous potential," McDonald said in the release. "But the public should recognize that there are some who seek to use this emerging technology to pursue criminal goals." He encouraged individuals and businesses "to consider how to best protect themselves from the emerging threat of SI-enabled crime."

James C. Barnacle Jr., the FBI's assistant director in charge of the New York Field Office, said the alleged scheme "demonstrates how the use of advanced technology can be exploited to commit large scale fraud." He added that "as criminals continue to weaponize emerging technologies, the FBI remains committed to rapidly adapting our capabilities to identify, investigate, and disrupt those who seek to harm New Yorkers and businesses operating in our communities."

The release asks anyone who believes they may be a victim to use the FBI's online tips page.

What is not in the record

The release does not include a response from the defendants or their lawyers, and The Record's report and the Guardian's carry none either. The release does not identify the specific technology or products used, say how the voice and image imitation worked in practice, or name the victim companies beyond their location and industry. It does not say whether any of the money has been recovered.