08/11/2026

Cybersecurity The new identity theft is no longer about impersonating you: it’s about building a new you

Digital Security

The Spanish National Police have arrested a Cybercrime suspect who used artificial intelligence to modify his face in real-time during verification video calls to impersonate the holders of falsified ID cards.

The cybercriminal did not need to resemble his victim. Artificial intelligence did the work for him. He would stand in front of the camera, show a falsified ID, and during the verification video call, a deepfake system would modify his features in real-time until his face became that of the person whose identity he intended to usurp.

The technique allowed the suspect to make 38 impersonation attempts on more than 30 real identities, with a particularly delicate goal: to pass the controls of a company responsible for issuing electronic certificates and thus obtain authorized digital signatures that could later be used to commit new frauds.

The case, investigated by National Police agents in the Spanish city of Murcia, shows to what extent artificial intelligence is transforming identity fraud. It is no longer just about obtaining a fake document or stealing a password. The attacker can fabricate a complete identity and present it before a camera as if it were a real person.