In the weeks before Bihar's assembly elections, construction worker Akul Sharma saw what he thought was Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing free motorcycles.
The video was real. The voice was not. Sharma nearly became one of the many Indians targeted by scammers using AI-generated voice clones of the prime minister to steal money and personal data through fraudulent social media ads.
Decode identified multiple Instagram accounts pumping out cheapfakes, manipulated media using rudimentary editing techniques, during the festival period between Diwali and Chhath Puja this year
The scam ads used real videos of Modi’s election speeches doctored with AI voice-overs of the prime minister ‘announcing’ freebies ranging from free cellphones, free mobile recharge, free laptops, cashbacks to free Hero Splendor bikes etc.
The reels, which led to fraudulent phishing URLs, were designed to extract personally identifiable information (PII) such as name, mobile number, email address and Aadhaar details.
These reels were boosted to the feeds of Instagram and Facebook users in India, through Meta’s promoted posts.
Cyber-security experts Decode spoke to said scammers use these reels to build a database of potential scam victims.
“Why aren’t they giving the bike? Modi had announced it”
Decode found Instagram reels, where many individuals who believed the videos to be genuine, commented on the post giving out their name and mobile number.
We spoke to a few of them who happened to work as labourers in different parts of the country.
“Elections were going on in Bihar at that time. Modi sir had announced free bikes, so I also shared my name and number,” Akul Sharma, who hails from Saharsa, Bihar and works at a construction site in Delhi, told Decode.
Sharma said he got a call and was asked for ID proof and asked to pay ₹30,000 for delivery and paperwork. But he refused.
“Modi ji said the bike was free. Why would I send ₹30,000?,” Sharma asked rhetorically.
Other accounts confirm scammers used various fake pretexts like registration fees, delivery/postal charges and ‘paperwork’ to extract money.
Ramesh Mandawat, who works at a factory in Kota, Rajasthan had a similar experience.
“I received calls from different numbers. They said a free Splendor bike is being sent to me,” Mandawat told Decode.
“One caller asked for ₹500 as registration charges and another person asked me to send ₹1000. They said that after sending the money, the bike would reach me within three to four days,” he said.
“I refused to send any money. I told them that I would pay only after receiving the bike,” Mandawat added.
During the conversation Mandawat asked an important question: “Why aren’t they giving the bike? Modi had announced it.”
Mangesh, who works as a construction labourer in Pune also believed the scam.
“The caller told me that my bike was being prepared for dispatch,” Mangesh told Decode.
“For registration, they asked me to send my Aadhaar card and pay ₹400 as packing charges online. I sent a photo of my Aadhaar card to their WhatsApp number and paid ₹400 to the number they provided via PhonePe,” he said.
Mangesh said he received another call asking him to pay ₹600 in postal charges and ₹1400 in delivery fees. That’s when he got suspicious.
“I told them I would only send the money after the bike is delivered. They insisted that I pay first. I said send the bike first and hung up the phone. After that, I received continuous calls asking for money, but I refused to pay,” Mangesh added.
“My Aadhaar card had gone to them and I had already lost ₹400. I never received any bike.”
Mangesh, like Akul and Ramesh had no idea the videos were a scam until this reporter told them.
How scammers game social media algorithms
Threat intelligence researcher Saumay Srivastava told Decode that scammers could have multiple objectives such as stealing personally identifiable information (PII), embedding browser cookies, malware or viruses through spoof URLs, getting victims to download APK files, and gaining access to Google or Facebook account credentials in some cases.
He said scammers often create a database of potential scam victims to target further.
Srivastava explained why the scam videos often have instructions such as ‘share this reel with five friends’ or call-to-actions like ‘Like, comment, follow this page, click the link in the bio’ etc.
Social media algorithms reward interactivity, he said. Scammers produce a large number of videos hoping that any one reel will go viral. By encouraging engagement and posting consistently, they game the algorithm's preference for interactive content.
A database of potential scam victims
Cyber-security expert Prashant Sahu said gangs often become active around the festival season. They are collecting large-scale databases of active social media users, Sahu said.
Once they have a user’s name, mobile number, and email, they can cheat them in multiple ways—someone may call pretending to be a bank employee, a company representative, or an official from a government department to scam them, he explained.
India is Instagram’s largest market by users, accounting for 480.55 million users as of October 2025, according to Statista.
Meta scam ad problem: How bad is it?
The scale of the problem extends far beyond India. Reuters recently reported that Meta had internally projected late last year it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue from running advertising for scams and banned goods.
“...the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day,” Reuters reported.
Meta said Reuters presented a distorted view to how it tackles fraud and scams and that its internal estimate was "rough and overly-inclusive."
While Decode found several of the scam accounts based in India, we also found evidence that some of these accounts and pages were being run by individuals outside India, indicating an international nexus in some cases.
In 2023 Decode reported how AI voice clones impersonating Indian celebrities ranging from Shah Rukh Khan to Virat Kohli to Sadhguru, were being weaponised by scammers and amplified through promoted posts on Facebook and Instagram.
The problem is so widespread that it is difficult to quantify the number of Instagram accounts and Facebook pages perpetrating the fraud.
A growing list of film actors and well known Hindi news anchors have moved court this year to legally protect their likeness against AI-enabled misuse which is also rife on other platforms like YouTube.
Deploying facial recognition technology to remove ads: Meta
Meta said deceptive ads that use public figures to scam people, violate its policies.
The company is deploying facial recognition technology to help identify and remove such ads, a spokesperson for Meta said in an emailed response.
“So far, the use of the technology seems to be having an impact: in the first half of 2025, user reports of celebrity bait ad scams, out of total ad impressions, dropped by 22% globally,” Meta's spokesperson said.
Modi speeches have become scam bait
Following the National Democratic Alliance’s win in Bihar, new scam ads claiming Modi had announced free mobile recharge worth ₹799 for three months, to celebrate the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory, emerged.
Cyber-security expert Prashant Sahu said the prime minister’s likeness was being misused to lend credibility to the scam and because his videos were widely available online.
“These videos use PM Modi because he is a major public figure with a huge fan following,” Sahu said.
“He is trusted by the public, and thousands of hours of his videos are available on the internet and social media. AI can easily learn from these videos and create voice clones and face replicas,” he said.
(Edited by Karen Rebelo)
