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THE BOSS WAS A ROBOT

By Zimbo · November 6, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Satirical cartoon: a nervous employee at her desk faces a laptop where a cheerful robot in a suit and tie, its face a screen showing a smiling CEO, gives a thumbs-up and points at a giant red WIRE button; a knowing tabby cat watches from the desk, on plain white paper.
Three men used AI to wear CEOs' faces and voices — and walked off with $129 million.Zimbo for AI News Page

The story behind the cartoon

The Justice Department unsealed an indictment on Friday charging three foreign nationals with using artificial intelligence to impersonate corporate executives and attorneys at major law firms, defrauding companies around the world of more than $129 million. Jacob Soall, 41, Sharon Hazan, 54, and Guy Sheetrit, 42, allegedly ran the scheme from July 2024 to February 2026, targeting thousands of companies; all three were arrested in Europe and are awaiting extradition to the United States.

Prosecutors say the conspirators would contact an employee at a target company pretending to be its chief executive, claiming to need help with a confidential financial transaction, and use AI to mimic the CEO's voice and image on calls. The fake executive would then direct the employee to attorneys at major international law firms who were supposedly handling the deal — attorneys who were also impersonations, mimicked by the same AI tools — and the fake lawyer would instruct the employee to wire a large sum to accounts controlled by the conspiracy, with the money moved around the world and converted into cryptocurrency.

The indictment names losses at six victims, among others: $4,829,580 from a hospital system in Missouri, $2,684,580 from a bank in Rhode Island, $2,968,497 from a hospital system in California, $11,578,474 from a financial technology company in the United Kingdom, $4,639,918 from a mutual fund company in Massachusetts, and $5,242,747 from a pet food company in Florida. Soall, who mainly impersonated attorneys from the United Kingdom, kept a handwritten script titled "Lawyer Call" to sound like a real lawyer; Hazan boasted he had laundered money since 1994 and handled more than $400 million in the previous three years. The defendants face up to 20 years in prison on the fraud and money-laundering counts.

The joke is the boss on the call: a cheerful robot in a suit and tie, its face a screen showing a smiling CEO, gives a thumbs-up while its metal finger hovers over a giant red WIRE button — and the nervous employee reaches for it anyway, while Issue the cat watches from the desk, already knowing the boss isn't the boss.

READ THE FULL REPORT — U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of New York ↗

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