King Philip of Belgium
The suspects come into contact with Belgian families close to royalty, foreign dignitaries and businesspeople, from whom they ask for money for the supposed release of Belgian journalists held hostage in Syria. They even suggest arranging a video call with the king, whose presence is generated by AI.
Belgian justice warned this Saturday that a group of scammers has been posing as the King of Belgium to try to extort money from foreign dignitaries or businesspeople, through emails, phone calls and videos generated by Artificial Intelligence.
According to , the victims are carefully selected based on his possible links with the Belgian royal family, explained the country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Since the beginning of 2025, a group of unknown people have been posing as King Philipby his chief of staff, Vincent Houssiauor in general Stéphane Dutronhead of SGRS, Belgium’s intelligence service, to try to obtain money.
“Fortunately, most victims quickly realized the fraud and only in one case a sum of money was actually transferred“, highlighted the Belgian MP, quoted by the AFP agency.
The suspects come into contact with Belgian families close to royaltyforeign dignitaries and businesspeople, from whom, at first, they requested financial support for the supposed release of Belgian journalists which, according to them, were being kept as hostages in Syria.
After several weeks without new reports, at the beginning of January 2026 a new wave of fraud attempts.
This time, they came into contact mainly with businesspeoplewith a “new striking element”: a invitation to a video conference in order to convince them that this is actually the king.
“The images of this video meeting were probably generated by artificial intelligence”, says the Belgian MP.
Some businesspeople received fake invitations to a fictitious gala dinnerwith a request for contribution or sponsorship for an event that, in reality, did not exist.
The Belgian Public Prosecutor’s Office is conducting the investigation with specialized units from the country’s Federal Police.
