07 October 2023 , 19:15
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A sick rap song about murder featuring the faked voices of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher has become an internet hit.
The England and Liverpool football heroes appear to sing on a track made by a gun thug in his prison cell. Malcolm Graham, a drill rapper who calls himself L20 Mazza, recorded it on an illegally kept phone in prison. Different versions were deepfaked – a type of digital editing – on the outside with Graham’s vocals replaced with phoney voices of Gerrard, 43, and Carragher, 45.
The lyrics of the song called Murderside gloat about gun crime and terrorising “rats” – police informants. One version featuring a fake Carragher has more than a million plays on TikTok. Another using a copy of Gerrard, now coaching in Saudi Arabia, has had 733,000 views. Graham, 26, from Bootle, Merseyside, was jailed after he was found with a Russian-made Baikal automatic pistol used to kill a teenager.
Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher (Getty Images)
Graham raps in his prison cell (TIK TOK)Kevin Wilson, 17, died after being shot in the back in Wavertree, Liverpool, in 2015. No one has been charged with murder. Graham got 11 years in 2016 after admitting possessing a firearm and bullets, and two counts of wounding with intent. There is no suggestion either Gerrard or Sky pundit Carragher know about the con. But they are not the only well- known people to fall victim to deep-fake scams.
The technology first appeared in 2017 but it has since become simpler and more common. A sick clip of murdered Merseyside toddler James Bulger prompted outrage. Spoof videos fooled millions into thinking Barack Obama had called Donald Trump a “complete dip****”, or Mark Zuckerberg brag about having “total control of billions of people’s stolen data”. Fraudsters also abuse the technology to impersonate people calling to ask for money. And it is used to replace the faces of porn film actors with those of celebs.
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Representatives of Gerrard and Garragher were contacted.