The Bucks County police in Pennsylvania arrested a woman who harassed rivals of her daughter’s cheerleading squad with a deepfake video. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
According to prosecutors, 50-year-old Raffaela Spone anonymously sent the cheerleading group’s coaches fake photos and videos of three participants, in which they were naked, drinking and smoking. The indictment says the suspect aimed to embarrass the girls and force them to leave the team.
Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub told reporters that the woman also sent anonymous messages to the victims, including urging the teens to kill themselves. The prosecutor’s office says the suspect’s daughter did not know about her mother’s actions.
Spone was charged with several offenses, including cyberstalking a minor. She has been released from custody pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 30.
The police identified the woman after tracing the phone numbers from which she sent messages to the cheerleaders. This led detectives to a company that sells deepfakes to marketing teams.
It remains unclear whether the woman worked for that organization, hired it to create the fake videos, or made the clips herself.
In December last year, the British Channel 4 released a deepfake of Queen Elizabeth II as an alternative Christmas greeting.
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