South Korea's Central Bank Governor Lee Chang-yong Impersonated to Attract Investment Groups
According to Yonhap News Agency, social media accounts impersonating South Korea's Bank Governor Lee Chang-yong have emerged, claiming to interpret economic trends and form study groups, leading users to add friends and join investment groups via private messages.
The account posted multiple messages containing his real credentials, including teaching at Princeton and advising the Bank for International Settlements, between September 22 and 23, but did not directly recommend stocks in public. After the central bank requested the platform to delete the account, it was suspended within hours; however, the investment group with many members continues to operate on instant messaging software. The group promises double-digit returns and requests personal information; when reporters inquired about the relationship with the central bank, the operators avoided the question by claiming that the internal situations of financial institutions are difficult for outsiders to understand.
Other impersonated figures include Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Chen Yudong, Mirae Asset Group Chairman Park Hyun-joo, as well as corporate leaders and celebrities such as SK Group's Choi Tae-won, LG Group's Koo Kwang-mo, and Samsung Electronics' Lee Jae-yong. Some advertisements use generative videos to mimic voices, tones, and expressions. South Korea only allows officially registered investment advisors to establish two-way channels for real-time communication.
In market mechanisms, buyers treat the central bank and chaebols' credibility as hooks for attracting customers, while sellers sell attention to the language of study groups as traffic intermediaries. The event is driven by the attention window before the Chuseok holiday. Beneficiaries are groups that can migrate the member lists from suspended accounts to continue operations in closed groups, while those under pressure are public figures whose names are used as customer acquisition materials and users whose accounts are deleted slower than the speed of group migration. Funds do not go through public stock recommendations but are transacted privately.
Public reports indicate that ordinary users' selfies can also be stolen for use as avatars.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
After Lee Chang-yong became the Governor of the Bank of Korea, his interest rate path and exchange rate statements became market pricing anchors. The scam does not require him to speak; as long as his credentials are verifiable and his avatar can be stolen, the authority of monetary policy can be converted into group conversion rates. South Korea's capital market has long had unregistered "stock classrooms" and Telegram trading rooms; regulators can shut down public accounts but cannot stop closed groups that have already completed the traffic diversion. The mass impersonation of chaebol chairmen and celebrities indicates that the supply of credibility goods has expanded from the financial circle to all social celebrities.
The capital path is: public platforms are responsible for customer acquisition, instant messaging software is responsible for transactions, and generative videos fill in the "last mile" of "seeing with one's own eyes". The cost has shifted from renting water armies to using models to clone voices and expressions; as marginal costs decrease, the same funnel can target both the central bank governor and entertainment stars simultaneously. Scammed funds enter stock recommendation rooms and then shift to high-fee targets or are directly withdrawn without going through the suitability review of licensed securities companies.
Analogies include the early "imitation of the Securities Regulatory Commission website", Japan's "celebrity LINE investment", and the deepfake CEO authorization transfers in the United States. What is unique to South Korea is the dual authority of chaebols and the central bank in the public's perception; a fake homepage can simultaneously leverage policy credibility and the wealth myth of chaebols. The industry is in a window period where identity verification lags behind generative models.
Structural changes belong to technological substitution. Generative videos turn "seeing with one's own eyes" from a verification method into a forgery advertising material; platform deletions only cut off the display layer, not the asset lists that have already moved into groups. The mechanism is that regulators can manage the two-way channels of licensed investment advisors but cannot control the semantic packaging of study groups; the more complete the public credentials of authoritative figures, the easier they are to script.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- Accounts can be suspended, but the lists of those already in groups cannot be removed.
- The more verifiable the credentials, the more suitable they are for customer acquisition copy.
- Generative videos make seeing with one's own eyes no longer equal to the actual presence of the person.