Regulator investigating behaviour
A TikTok lawyer has paid “substantial damages” to the victim of a political deepfake video that he shared to his 200,000+ social media followers.
Akhmed Yakoob, a criminal solicitor known for his supercars cars and TikTok videos, has paid damages, as well as costs, whilst he continues to be investigated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for his behaviour.
The events took place in May last year when Cheryl Bennett, a school teacher, was knocking on doors in her local constituency. She was helping fellow teacher, and Labour candidate, Qasim Mughal to research voting patterns in the area.
One such interaction was widely shared on social media, but an unknown individual manipulated it using deepfake technology to falsely depict Bennett making racist and offensive remarks after knocking on a voter’s door.
Yakoob later shared the edited video, which Bennett claimed resulted in her facing a “torrent of abuse”.
At the time Yakoob was running his own campaign as an independent candidate to become the new West Midlands mayor. He would ultimately fall short, taking only 11.7% of the vote and coming in behind the Labour and Conservative candidates. He would later go on to stand in the general election, again coming up short behind Labour’s Shabana Mahmood.
Bennett said the ordeal had “ruined” her life. The teacher did not go back to work for two weeks having been told not to return for her own safety, with some strangers even going as far as to go to the houses of her parents and grandmother to demand information on her location.
Nick McAleenan, the partner at Brabners which represented Bennett, commented that “In this case, the offending TikTok portrayed Cheryl Bennett in a completely false light and caused her serious reputational harm. She was collateral damage.”
“It’s important that technology isn’t used to spread misleading material, especially during election campaigns,” he added in a post shared to LinkedIn. “‘Deep fakes’ risk interfering with the democratic process and unfairly swaying voters.”
In a comment to the Sunday Times, Yakoob said: “I paid money because… my wrongdoing was that I shared a video, which of course affected Cheryl. Of course I’m sorry. If I wasn’t sorry, I wouldn’t have agreed to settle with her and give her a sum of money… If I wasn’t sorry, I would be in court trying to defend myself but I acknowledged my mistake, that’s why I’m sorry.”
An SRA spokesperson has told Legal Cheek that: “We announced we were investigating Akhmed Yakoob last May when this issue first arose. Our investigation continues.”
The person behind the doctoring of the footage is still unknown.
