I’m wearing a bikini and drugs? The criminal of the fake video was a friend’s mother.

In Pennsylvania, the United States, a mother in her 50s distributing a deepfake video to her high school daughter friends is known and controversial. Deep fake video is a fake video created by synthesizing the face and voice of a specific person.

According to the Washington Post (WP) on the 13th (local time), a district prosecutor in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, said it had charged Rafaela Spone, 50, who lives in Philadelphia, with a child cybercrime.

According to the prosecution, Spone continued to send pornographic videos anonymously to friends of her daughter’s cheerleading team in July-August last year, as well as the director and coach.

The video featured women in bikinis using alcohol and drugs. However, as the women in the video were reported to be girls in the cheerleading team, the problem rose to the surface. Students appearing in the video are said to have received threatening messages from time to time asking them to leave the team.
It was Cyberbullying, repeatedly harassing a specific target in cyberspace.

The victims and their parents immediately asked the police to investigate. As a result of the analysis, all of the videos were identified as fakes using deepfake technology. In the investigation, the police identified Spone as a suspect through IP address tracking.

According to reports, Spone, who was arrested on the 4th, has not revealed specific motives for the crime. However, the parents of one victim told the local newspaper Philadelphia Inquirer that “the harassment began after I told him not to hang out with Spone’s daughter.” They complained that they were afraid that the children would be kicked out of the team because of this video.

Victory Vipers, who runs the cheerleading team, explained that “we have a strict anti-bullying policy” and “we conducted an internal investigation last summer and took appropriate measures.” He drew a line saying, “This incident happened outside the gym.”

According to the WP, experts expressed concern over the fact that the deepfake technology, which has been abused against politicians and entertainers, has taken place against teenagers.

Prosecutor Matthew Weintraub, who was in charge of the investigation, pointed out that the case was “the first case of cyber bling an adult committed against adolescents.” “This incident is different from cyber bling among peers,” he said. “It means that bullying using deepfake technology may occur even among teenagers in the future.” In particular, he predicted that the sentence would be light unless the fake video created by Spone was recognized as a sex offender. It is said that there is a need to raise the level of punishment for cyber crimes using deep fake technology.

Professor of law at the University of Virginia, who studies cyber privacy, stressed the need for alternatives, saying, “As the barrier to entry to deepfake technology is lowering, women are overwhelmingly targeted.”

Reporter Lee Min-jung [email protected]