Polygon’s co-founder warns of deepfake video rip-off utilizing his likeness concentrating on startups
Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, has flagged a troubling rise in deepfake scams utilizing his likeness to deceive crypto founders. Polygon is among the largest Ethereum layer-2 networks.
In a Could 13 social media submit on X, Nailwal stated a number of people lately reached out to confirm if he had spoken with them over Zoom.
Nonetheless, he was not concerned in these conferences because the scammers used manipulated movies of him to achieve belief and trick them into putting in dangerous software program.
How the scammers function
Nailwal acknowledged that the rip-off started with the compromise of the Telegram account belonging to Shreyansh Singh, who leads Polygon Ventures.
From there, the attackers messaged startup founders affiliated with Polygon’s funding community, pretending to reconnect for funding discussions.
recipients had been then invited to hitch Zoom conferences via phishing hyperlinks disguised to look official.
These hyperlinks required desktop entry and led to video calls that includes AI-generated variations of Nailwal, Singh, and a girl claiming to be a part of the funding workforce.
Nailwal identified that the calls didn’t have audio. As a substitute, contributors had been urged to put in a Software program Growth Package (SDK).
Nonetheless, the Polygon founder stated the transfer is designed to contaminate the recipient’s techniques.
Rising issues about deepfakes
Nailwal’s incident just isn’t an remoted case and exhibits that deepfake fraud is changing into a extra harmful industry-wide problem.
Over time, deepfake impersonations have more and more focused distinguished crypto executives like Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has additionally confronted a number of situations of his deepfakes being utilized in rip-off promotions.
This assault vector exhibits cybercriminals’ rising use of generative AI within the evolution of crypto-related fraud. A current report identified that losses from deepfake-driven scams exceeded $200 million in Q1 2025 alone.
Attributable to this, Nailwal suggested group members by no means to put in unfamiliar software program throughout unsolicited interactions.
He additionally emphasised the significance of operational hygiene, urging crypto customers to separate their wallet-signing actions from common machine use. He acknowledged:
“These assaults maintain getting increasingly refined, so finest method is to maintain a separate laptop computer for signing by way of your wallets solely from that laptop computer and by no means do anything on that pockets.”
