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AI incidents at Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group)

Last swept Oct 21, 2026 · 1 incident on record

Has Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group) had a publicly reported AI incident?

Yes. As of Oct 21, 2026, the register holds 1 publicly reported AI incident at Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group) since January 2022. The most recent is "Instagram ads use AI deepfakes of BMO strategist Brian Belski to lure investors" (Jun 17, 2025), status: reported, severity 1 of 5. Last swept Oct 21, 2026 (19 queries).

BMO Financial Group's AI incidents since January 2022 against the industryBMO Financial Group: Jun 17, 2025: Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group) — Instagram ads use AI deepfakes of BMO strategist Brian Belski to lure investors (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5). Grey dots: the other 61 incidents in the register.Feb 8, 2022: Budapest Bank Zrt. — Hungarian DPA fines Budapest Bank HUF 250m for AI emotion analysis of customer-service calls (Regulatory finding, severity 2 of 5)Feb 17, 2022: Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. — Suits alleged Wells Fargo's automated mortgage underwriting discriminated against minority applicants (Litigation, severity 3 of 5)May 2, 2022: Citigroup (Citigroup Global Markets Limited) — Citi trading algorithm sells $1.4bn of European stocks after an input error; UK and German fines (Trading automation, severity 4 of 5)Jul 2022: Binance — Binance says scammers used an AI deepfake of its communications chief in listing-scam calls (Deepfake fraud, severity 1 of 5)Jul 14, 2022: Bank of America — Regulators fine Bank of America $225m over automated fraud filter that froze unemployment-benefit cards (Fraud model, severity 4 of 5)Jul 26, 2022: Upstart — Investors' class action says Upstart misled them about its AI underwriting model (Litigation, severity 2 of 5)Aug 10, 2022: Oportun — CFPB fines Oportun's Hello Digit $2.7m after its automated savings algorithm overdrafted customers (Other, severity 3 of 5)Oct 3, 2022: The Charles Schwab Corporation — Class action alleged Schwab's Voice ID examined callers' voiceprints without written consent (Litigation, severity 1 of 5)Oct 6, 2022: JPMorgan Chase — Callers sued over Nuance voice biometrics on Chase customer-service calls (Litigation, severity 1 of 5)Nov 27, 2022: Webster Bank, N.A. — Breach at ML fraud-analytics vendor Guardian Analytics exposes Webster Bank customers' data (Vendor AI breach, severity 3 of 5)2023: Bank of America — AI clone of a client's voice calls a Bank of America banker to move money; attempt fails (Voice clone, severity 1 of 5)Jan 4, 2023: Wells Fargo — DoNotPay says an AI voice clone got Wells Fargo to refund fees; the bank says the call didn't happen as shown (Voice clone, severity 1 of 5)Feb 22, 2023: Lloyds Bank (Lloyds Banking Group) — Vice reporter breaks into his own Lloyds account with an AI-cloned voice (Voice clone, severity 1 of 5)Apr 18, 2023: Betterment — SEC fines robo-adviser Betterment $9m after coding errors stopped automated tax-loss harvesting (Other, severity 3 of 5)Apr 28, 2023: JPMorgan Chase (Chase) — WSJ columnist's AI voice clone passes Chase credit-card voice biometrics (Voice clone, severity 1 of 5)May 1, 2023: Coinbase — Coinbase sued under Illinois BIPA over face-scan identity verification (Litigation, severity 1 of 5)May 31, 2023: Deutsche Kreditbank AG (DKB) — Berlin DPA fines a bank, reported as DKB, €300,000 over an unexplained automated credit-card refusal (Regulatory finding, severity 2 of 5)Aug 27, 2023: Fortress Trust and Retool — Deepfaked voice in Retool breach linked to about $15m crypto theft at Fortress Trust (Voice clone, severity 3 of 5)Dec 2023: Revolut — Revolut faces Illinois BIPA class action over selfie identity checks (Litigation, severity 1 of 5)Dec 17, 2023: Navy Federal Credit Union — Suits alleged Navy Federal's semi-automated mortgage underwriting discriminated against minority applicants (Litigation, severity 2 of 5)Feb 5, 2024: OKX and OnlyFake — 404 Media passes OKX identity checks with a fake ID from 'neural network' site OnlyFake (Synthetic identity, severity 1 of 5)Mar 18, 2024: Delphia (USA) Inc. and Global Predictions Inc. — SEC's first 'AI-washing' cases: robo-advisers Delphia and Global Predictions pay $400,000 (AI-washing, severity 3 of 5)Mar 27, 2024: Upstart — Independent monitor finds approval disparities for Black applicants in Upstart's AI lending model (Bias finding, severity 2 of 5)Jul 25, 2024: ING Bank N.V. — Dutch human-rights institute finds ING's automated payment screening discriminated over non-Dutch names (Bias finding, severity 3 of 5)Oct 2, 2024: Starling Bank — FCA fines Starling £29m after its automated sanctions screening checked only part of the list (Regulatory finding, severity 4 of 5)Oct 10, 2024: Rimar Capital USA, Inc. / Rimar Capital, LLC — SEC charges Rimar Capital over false claims of an AI-driven trading platform (AI-washing, severity 3 of 5)Nov 5, 2024: PlainsCapital Bank (Hilltop Holdings) and Pathward, N.A. — PlainsCapital Bank customer sues after an alleged AI voice clone redirected a $20,000 transfer (Voice clone, severity 2 of 5)Nov 12, 2024: Metro Bank — FCA fines Metro Bank £16.7m after its automated transaction monitoring missed 60m transactions (Regulatory finding, severity 3 of 5)Nov 28, 2024: Santander UK (Banco Santander) and Halifax (Lloyds Banking Group) — BBC reporter's AI-cloned voice passes Santander and Halifax phone-banking Voice ID (Voice clone, severity 1 of 5)Dec 7, 2024: Kasikornbank — Thai court orders Kasikornbank to pay part of a loss to an AI face-swap fake-official video-call scam (Deepfake fraud, severity 2 of 5)Dec 16, 2024: State Bank of India — SBI warns that deepfake videos of its top management are promoting investment scams (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Jan 21, 2025: DNB Bank — Deepfaked DNB executives in a fake Teams meeting try to get Singapore staff to pay out millions (Deepfake fraud, severity 1 of 5)Jan 22, 2025: Kakao Pay — Korea fines Kakao Pay KRW 5.97bn for sending 40m users' data to Alipay to build a credit-risk scoring model (Regulatory finding, severity 3 of 5)Mar 20, 2025: ABN AMRO Bank N.V. — Man used deepfaked selfies and ID photos to open 47 ABN AMRO accounts in other people's names (Deepfake fraud, severity 3 of 5)Mar 26, 2025: HSBC (Singapore) — Deepfake Zoom call leads a Singapore finance director to wire US$499,000 from an HSBC account; funds recovered (Deepfake fraud, severity 2 of 5)Apr 2025: Goldman Sachs — Deepfakes of Goldman strategists David Kostin and Abby Joseph Cohen used in Instagram stock-tip scams (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Apr 1, 2025: Kotak Mahindra Bank — AI-manipulated video of Uday Kotak promoting an investment scheme goes viral (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Apr 11, 2025: Nubank (Nu Holdings) — Deepfake videos push a fake 'Nubank indemnity' scam in Brazil (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Apr 28, 2025: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. — Class action alleged JPMorgan's HireVue AI video interviews were an unlawful lie-detector test (Litigation, severity 2 of 5)May 8, 2025: Klarna — Klarna resumes hiring human agents after AI-first customer service produced 'lower quality' (AI job-cut reversal, severity 2 of 5)Jul 2025: Banco Santander — Deepfake ads clone Santander chair Ana Botín's voice to push fake investment platforms (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Jul 10, 2025: Earnest Operations LLC — Massachusetts AG settles with student lender Earnest for $2.5m over AI underwriting disparate impact (Bias finding, severity 3 of 5)Jul 29, 2025: Commonwealth Bank of Australia — Commonwealth Bank reverses 45 job cuts it attributed to an AI voice bot (AI job-cut reversal, severity 2 of 5)Sep 2, 2025: Banco Popular Dominicano — Banco Popular Dominicano reports a generative-AI deepfake of its executive president (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Nov 4, 2025: Upstart — Upstart says its AI underwriting model over-reacted to macro signals, cutting approvals; investors sue (Credit decisioning, severity 3 of 5)Dec 9, 2025: PKO Bank Polski — PKO BP warns that criminals use AI to forge bank employee IDs in impersonation scams (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Jan 2026: Klarna — Klarna processed payments for nine months for shops advertising with celebrity deepfakes (Deepfake fraud, severity 2 of 5)Feb 2026: Fideuram - Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking and Intesa Sanpaolo — Fideuram wires €95m after fake Intesa CEO messages and an AI-cloned lawyer's voice (Voice clone, severity 4 of 5)Feb 26, 2026: Commonwealth Bank of Australia — Commonwealth Bank refers about A$1bn of suspect home loans, some reportedly AI-forged, to police (Other, severity 3 of 5)Mar 12, 2026: Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. and Isybank S.p.A. — Italy's privacy regulator fines Intesa Sanpaolo €17.6m for profiling 2.4m customers to move them to Isybank (Regulatory finding, severity 3 of 5)Apr 2026: Westpac New Zealand and Kiwibank — Deepfakes of Westpac NZ and Kiwibank chief executives used in Facebook investment-scam ads (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)May 2026: Lloyds Bank — Lloyds refunds estate of 82-year-old customer lured by an AI Farage deepfake investment scam (Deepfake fraud, severity 2 of 5)May 4, 2026: Bankr (Bankrbot) and xAI (Grok) — Morse-code prompt injection via Grok makes AI wallet agent Bankrbot send about $150,000-200,000 in tokens (Prompt injection, severity 2 of 5)May 5, 2026: CB Financial Services, Inc. (Community Bank, Carmichaels, PA) — Community Bank files 8-K after an employee put customer SSNs into an unauthorized AI app (Data leak to an LLM, severity 3 of 5)May 13, 2026: Klarna and Pagaya Technologies — Pagaya sues Klarna, alleging it 'distilled' and misappropriated its AI underwriting model (Litigation, severity 2 of 5)Jun 3, 2026: Monzo and Barclays — AI-generated 'Monzo Slots' and 'Barclays Slots' casino ads impersonate UK banks on social media (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Jun 22, 2026: Deutsche Bank National Trust Company (as trustee) — D.C. Court of Appeals strikes Deutsche Bank National Trust brief citing four AI-invented cases (Litigation, severity 2 of 5)Jul 3, 2026: NatWest Group — Deepfake image of NatWest CEO Paul Thwaite spread on X as scam bait (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)Sep 17, 2026: Libra Internet Bank — Libra Internet Bank's OpenAI-based assistant 'Lia' calls a customer an 'idiot' (Chatbot failure, severity 1 of 5)Sep 29, 2026: Shinhan Bank, KB Kookmin Bank, Hana Bank, BNK Busan Bank and Yegaram Savings Bank — AI-agent-assisted intrusions breach Shinhan, KB Kookmin, Hana and 13 other Korean financial firms (Other, severity 5 of 5)Oct 2, 2026: U.S. Bank National Association (named in the complaint, not a defendant) — U.S. Bank customers sue Pegasystems alleging its Voice AI secretly analysed their customer-service calls (Litigation, severity 2 of 5)Jun 17, 2025: Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group) — Instagram ads use AI deepfakes of BMO strategist Brian Belski to lure investors (Brand impersonation, severity 1 of 5)20222023202420252026
BMO Financial Group in colour, every other incident in the register in grey · same scale as the hub timeline · dot size = severity
Incidents on record
DateInstitutionIncidentAI?RoleCategorySeverityStatus
Jun 17, 2025Bank of Montreal (BMO Financial Group)Instagram ads use AI deepfakes of BMO strategist Brian Belski to lure investorsML (inferred)AI used against the institutionBrand impersonation 1Reported

Jun 17, 2025 · AI used against the institution · severity 1/5

Instagram ads use AI deepfakes of BMO strategist Brian Belski to lure investors

BleepingComputer reported on 17 June 2025 that Instagram ads run under the name "BMO Belski" used Bank of Montreal's name and AI-generated deepfake videos of BMO chief investment strategist Brian Belski to lure users into a "private WhatsApp investment group". The ads were run from a repurposed Facebook page and kept appearing for days after BleepingComputer reported them to Instagram. After BleepingComputer contacted him, Belski posted a warning that he posts only from his official LinkedIn account, and The Globe and Mail reported his disavowal as part of a wave of impersonation scams targeting Canadian investors. No losses tied to the BMO Belski ads have been reported, and no BMO corporate statement was found.

Responses and near-misses

Not incidents: precautions and statements with no reported harm.

How this page is made

Entries come from the register of AI incidents at banks: events since January 2022, each sourced to two independent publishers or one official or court document, with the institution's response recorded. A sweep searches news, regulator, court and security sources for the institution by name; its date, query count and result are logged on the register's method section.

Deeper on BMO Financial Group
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