What Happens to a Deepfake Scam After It Makes the News
We track deepfake scam campaigns continuously, including long after they're covered in the news. Two were investigated by Forbes Colombia this spring. Here is what the numbers did next.
On March 27, 2026, Forbes Colombia published an investigation into a network of deepfake ads built around the face of Mario Hernández, one of the country’s best-known entrepreneurs. He said publicly that the videos were completely false. The story traveled. By any reasonable measure, the alarm had been raised. A month later, the week of April 26, his face appeared in 188 fraudulent ads in seven days. It was the most we had recorded since the campaign began.
We track these campaigns continuously, long after the news moves on. It is the only reason we can tell you what happened next instead of only what happened during. Forbes caught this one at 24 ads; we have logged 801 more since, 825 in all.
The same sequence had just played out with David Vélez, the founder of Nu. Forbes looked into the deepfakes cloning him and published on April 9. Since that morning, we have logged 356 more.
Two prominent investigations, in one of the most credible outlets in the region, by people who did the work well. In both, the impersonated figure spoke out. In both, the volume of fake content went up afterward.
The arithmetic doesn’t move
It is tempting to read a published exposé as an ending. It rarely is, and the reason is unglamorous.
Nothing about an article changes the math the scam runs on. The fakes still cost almost nothing to generate. The ad platforms still deliver them, for next to nothing, to whoever is scrolling. And enough people still click. A story raises the price of none of that. It also doesn’t reach the people running the operation, who were never going to read it and quit out of embarrassment.
What a story reaches is everyone else. Somewhere in that audience is a person who would have clicked next week and now recognizes the format and keeps moving. That is the real thing the coverage does, and it is worth doing. It is also the full extent of it. The number of people who fall for a given ad goes down. The number of ads does not.
The two feel the same from outside
That distinction is easy to lose, because from the outside the two look identical. The headline runs. The company issues a statement. The comments fill with warnings. The episode closes, and everyone exhales.
The graph, meanwhile, keeps climbing. The week of the relief was, in one of these cases, the worst week on record. A campaign does not know it has been handled.
We notice this mostly because watching the number after the noise dies down is, more or less, what we do. The figures here are ours, pulled from the same monitoring the reporters drew on, carried past the point where a news cycle ends. We were glad the stories ran; our data helped build them, and warning the public is worth the work on its own.
The only thing we would add is the part that doesn’t make the headline: a press moment is a warning to a lot of people, which is genuinely useful, and the campaign behind it keeps its own counsel until something actually takes it down. Those are two different events. It is easy, and costly, to feel the first one and assume it was the second.
If you ever want to know what’s actually circulating with your name or face on it, long after any headline, we’re glad to look.
We’ll tell you what we’re seeing, typically within 24 hours.
The figures in this article come from Revelum’s own detection and tracking systems and reflect a limited set of cases. The underlying investigations are collected in our coverage of the Forbes Colombia and Teleamazonas reporting, with full breakdowns of the David Vélez and Mario Hernández campaigns.
Revelum is a deepfake detection and removal service operating globally, with a focus on the Americas and Europe. We protect executives, public figures, political leaders, and organizations from AI-generated disinformation and fraud.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every situation is different, and we strongly recommend consulting a qualified legal professional for guidance specific to your circumstances. Revelum’s services are operational in nature and do not replace legal counsel.
Frequently asked questions
- Does press coverage stop a deepfake scam?
- In our tracking data, the campaigns tend to keep running, and sometimes grow, after they are covered. A story doesn't change what the scam runs on: the fakes are cheap to make, ad platforms still distribute them, and enough people still click. What coverage does change is how many people recognize the scam and avoid it.
- So is press coverage of deepfake fraud worth doing?
- Yes. A good investigation teaches a large audience what a scam looks like, and some of them will recognize the next fake and scroll past it. That is real protection. It reduces how many people fall for a given ad. It does not reduce how many ads exist, which is a separate problem.
- How does Revelum know what happens after the coverage?
- Revelum monitors these campaigns continuously, well past the date a news story runs. The figures in this article come from that tracking, the same detection data Forbes Colombia and Teleamazonas drew on for their reporting, carried forward past the point where the news cycle ends.