Sask. retiree warns others after losing $3K to crypto fraud using AI video of prime minister

Retired teacher Lynn Phaneuf says he and his wife generally only use the smart TV in the living room of their Prince Albert home to watch the news. 

When Phaneuf, 70, saw what purported to be an interview between CBC host Rosemary Barton and Prime Minister Mark Carney talking about cryptocurrency investment opportunities backed by the federal government, he thought he was watching a legitimate segment on a CBC streaming platform.

“With all the stuff that has been going on with Mark Carney, trying to get housing going and this and that, I thought this could be just one of those initiatives that is good for Canadians,” Phaneuf said. 

The segment did not air on CBC's platform, and it was fake — a fraudulent video made using AI to impersonate Carney, Barton and CBC branding to direct people to an investment company that was flagged by the Manitoba Securities Commission in June 2025. 

Phaneuf said he had doubts throughout the weeks-long interaction with scammers that ultimately cost him $2,800. But with around $800 in profits deposited to his Canadian bank account, a legitimate cryptocurrency site tangled up in the scheme, the professional nature of the so-called financial advisers and a confusing phone call from RBC, there was always just enough reassurance to keep going, he said. 

“I always use the analogy of being lost in the bush. Once you’re lost, you stop believing the things that you should believe."

The Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan said it began tracking amounts reported lost to cryptocurrency scams in the province in 2024, and as of the beginning of November 2025, the total lost was $1.3 million.

For Canada, the reported amount lost totals more than $388 million between January 2024 and September 2025, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Both agencies say only an estimated five to 10 per cent of victims report the fraud. 

Mathieu Lavigne, the analytic lead at the Media Ecosystem Observatory — a Canadian-based research initiative that monitors and analyzes online harms — said deepfake, AI-generated videos like the one Phaneuf encountered are a known problem for social media companies. 

But the companies are taking a primarily “reactive” approach, he said. 

“They’ve basically just been removing individual pages and ads when they’ve been flagged.”  

Regulations for ads on social media are much looser than regulations for traditional broadcasts, he said.

Companies like Meta, which owns Facebook, rely on ad buyers to self-declare deceptive AI use and no identity verification is needed before creating a page, even pages running financial ads, Lavigne said. 

“Right now it is possible for any individual around the world to create a page and start buying ads right away that try to defraud Canadians."