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The Curious Case of the Fake Florida Newsroom · Question Everything

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I'm Brian Reed. This is Question Everything from KCRW Implacement Theory.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: We investigate people who are burying, distorting, or denying the truth.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: And today on the show, we have exactly that. A
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: true whodunit that our producer Zach St. Louis recently, and
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: very intrepidly, I might say, solved. Unlike lots of podcast mysteries,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Zach actually got to the bottom of this one. And
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: in doing that, he revealed, among a lot of other things,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the way AI is changing how people justify bad behavior
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to others and even to themselves.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: This is so weird. Like every part of this story,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: I feel like just keeps getting weirder.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Stick around. All right, here's Zach with his story.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: At first glance, the South Florida Standard looked like any
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: other local news outlet. Kate Payne is the one who
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: first turned me on to it. Kate's a reporter for
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: a small nonprofit newsroom in Florida called the Florida Trib,
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: where she mostly covers state government. She used to work
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: for the Associated Press, but missed local reporting, so she
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: went back to that.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I did miss the local focus, but also the appeal
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: was the investigative work, for sure.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: Earlier this year, Kate was scrolling on X when she
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: saw a tweet from a fellow Florida journalist, someone she
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: was familiar with. This journalist tweeted about an article he'd
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: seen published by another local Florida news site about a
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: city council election in Clearwater, Florida. The site publishing it
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: was called the South Florida Standard. And the journalist calling
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: attention to it was making an accusation. Kate explained that
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: this journalist.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Posted that this outlet, the South Florida Standard, had plagiarized
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: one of their stories.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I was like, that's weird.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Like, I've never heard of this outlet. What's going on here?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: And not only that, but the photo that was associated
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: with the story was pretty misleading.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: It was a photo not of Clearwater, Florida, the city
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: the story was about, but of New York City, with
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: One World Trade Center visible in the background. What did
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: you think when you saw that?
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: It just felt like I don't believe that anybody is
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: paying attention to this site and fact-checking what information is
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: being published here in a way that feels really careless.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: And so I just started poking around.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: There was a South Florida Standard logo on top of
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: the homepage, a list of topics they cover. Business, technology, lifestyle.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: The About page said, The South Florida Standard was founded
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: in 2025 to deliver in-depth reporting while legacy media is contracting.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: We're expanding coverage, not cutting it. The publication was putting
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: out several articles each day about local issues in Florida.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: Five Key Takeaways from the Mayoral Race in St. Petersburg,
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: a Greek frozen yogurt shop opening in Miami. There was
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: an editorial standards section that explained the outlet's commitment to
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: accuracy and fairness. It also laid out their policy on corrections,
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: that they made them promptly and transparently. And there was
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: an email address for readers to submit those corrections. Then
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Kate saw, under the heading Our Team, a list of
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: reporters on staff.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't recognize any of these people. I think it
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: was a team of seven or eight people who allegedly
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: have long careers in South Florida journalism that I had
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: never heard of.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: In my life.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: That's jumped out to you as like, how do I
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: not know any of these people? Yeah.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: And when doing just some pretty basic backgrounding of like
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Googling these people, with few exceptions, they had virtually no
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: other internet footprint. I was like, this does not seem real.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I reached out to a number of the emails that
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: are listed on the website, if not all of them.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: There are a number of like, you know, news at
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: South Florida Standard dot com, whatever. And then email addresses
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: associated with the reporters as well.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Because they all they all had email addresses.
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It's a very weird email to send.
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: Are you real?
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: Hello.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: How are you doing?
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  Speaker 4: Are you real?
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  Speaker 2: Can you demonstrate that you're a person who exists in
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the world?
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  Speaker 3: They could not demonstrate that they were real people in
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: the world because they weren't. There was editor-in-chief Sofia Delgado,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: a dark-haired woman in her supposed headshot who, according to
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: her bio, graduated from Florida International University in 2010 with
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: a journalism degree. And she, quote, regularly breaks stories by
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: tapping into Spanish-language sources that other outlets miss and lives
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: with her husband and two kids. There was technology reporter
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Marcus Vega, whose bio said he was a software developer
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: who transitioned to journalism in 2018, is from Sao Paulo,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: and loves attending gallery openings in Miami's design district.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Made-up people with made-up biographies, made-up credentials.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. As for the articles on the South Florida Standard
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: website that were purporting to be written by these fake reporters,
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: Kate realized that the site wasn't publishing fake content, per se.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: That frozen yogurt shop really did open in Miami. That
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: was a real city council race in Clearwater. The South
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Florida Standard seemed to be taking actual news stories from
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: other legitimate Florida news outlets, rewording them slightly, and then
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: republishing them under a new headline and a new fictitious author.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: The articles would usually link to the original source the
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: story was from somewhere within the piece. It was all
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: so strange. There were no ads, no obvious way the
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: site was making money.
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  Speaker 2: The entire enterprise raises a question for me of what
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: is this for? Like, what is the end game? Especially
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: when I couldn't find a particular obvious political agenda behind it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: I looked at this site and had the same experience
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: as Kate. It kind of reminded me of when you
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: see a beautiful stone building from a distance. You think,
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: that's impressive. I wonder how old it is. Who made it?
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: It must have taken so much work to build it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: But when you get close to the building, you realize
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: that all of those hand-cut stones are just painted onto
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: the concrete. It's a facade, meant to fool the people
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: on the sidewalk and make us think we're looking at
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: something that we're not. The South Florida Standard website definitely
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: had the facade of a local news site. But what
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: wasn't clear to Kate, or to me, was who it
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: was trying to fool.
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: And why.
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  Speaker 2: It's just like, this looks like AI. Like, this looks fake.
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  Speaker 3: I'm curious how it feels as just like a local
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: reporter for a small newsroom that's trying to report factual
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: stories all the time to have a website like this
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: pop up that could be, you know, plagiarizing your articles
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: or stealing readers.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's disturbing. And it's really distressing for me how
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: easy it seems to be to make websites like this
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and how... successful I can imagine them being. But I
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: still don't know exactly what's happening here.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: I had never heard of a site quite like this before.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: So as Kate continued investigating the South Florida Standard for
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: her outlet, I did the same. I contacted Jeremy Carrasco,
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: who makes his living debunking fake AI-generated media. He's got
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: an online outlet called Riddance TikTok and Instagram accounts where
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: he explains how to tell when something is or isn't
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  Speaker 3: made by AI.
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  Speaker 6: Can you spot the mistake in this photo that's captioned,
• 7:48
  Speaker 6: AI is getting too realistic?
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  Speaker 3: He comes across as a nerdy science teacher in his videos,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: and I mean that as a compliment. I showed him
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  Speaker 3: the South Florida Standard.
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  Speaker 6: What is going on here? Why does this exist? Okay,
• 8:01
  Speaker 6: someone's using AI to make this. Like, why are they
• 8:04
  Speaker 6: going through that trouble?
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  Speaker 3: This had been bothering Kate, and then me, and now Jeremy.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: What was the goal of the South Florida Standard? Was
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: anyone even reading it? Was it making money? If it was, how?
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Jeremy told me, based on his experience debunking AI media,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: that this site looked to be totally AI-generated. The photos
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: of the supposed journalists looked too polished. One tell was
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: very even studio lighting, despite the fact that they were
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: all taken in different locations. And with the coverage, Jeremy
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: said it looked like the AI was scraping reports from
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  Speaker 3: real Florida news sources... and then summarizing them in repurposed
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  Speaker 3: articles on the South Florida Standard with such plain and
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  Speaker 3: unoriginal language that he felt it was unlikely human journalists
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  Speaker 3: were involved at all. And he could tell from the
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: code of the website that it didn't look like a
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: human was touching that either. And that code also led
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: Jeremy to another discovery.
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  Speaker 6: What I found was other AI-generated fake news websites that
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: were all tied together.
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  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 9:07
  Speaker 6: Just by digging into the code online, You can come
• 9:09
  Speaker 6: across a pretty big network of the other websites associated
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: with this company.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: Through a unique URL buried in the South Florida Standards Code,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: Jeremy was able to link four other AI-generated local news
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: sites to it. The San Francisco Download, the New York
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: Evening Mail, the Jersey Ledger, and Phila FYI, which covers
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Philadelphia news. And also, weirdly, a website posing as a
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: medical journal in Hawaii, with the very original title... Hawaii
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Medical Journal. All of the sites looked a bit different.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Each had their own colors and fonts, but they all
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: had the same features as the South Florida Standard. All
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: were publishing stories that were ripped from real news sources.
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  Speaker 3: They all had about pages explaining the outlet's mission statements.
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  Speaker 3: The San Francisco Downloads said, we publish short, we publish fast,
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  Speaker 3: we link to our sources. If we get something wrong,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: we fix it and say so. The New York Evening
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  Speaker 3: Mail said their mission was, quote, to serve New Yorkers
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  Speaker 3: with original in-depth journalism focused on the stories that matter
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: to the people who live, work, and raise families in
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  Speaker 3: this city. The New York one also had an address
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: listed for its newsroom, 18 West 18th Street. I went.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: I'm looking for the New York Evening Mail. It says
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: this is their address. No newsroom. No New York Evening Mail.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Just a WeWork. I looked up all the reporters on
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: these sites, at least two dozen of them. None of
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: them had any online footprint or work history that I
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: could find. No articles published on any other sites. It
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: seems we'd inadvertently discovered a syndicate of fake news outlets
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: spanning the U.S. What the hell was going on here?
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: In that piece of code he found, Jeremy was also
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: able to see another important lead. All of these fake sites,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: from New York and San Francisco and Hawaii and Florida,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: were connected to a single organization, something called the Discoverability Company.
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: The website discoverability.co itself It says, we help with your
• 11:15
  Speaker 6: online footprint, no matter who you are or what you're
• 11:18
  Speaker 6: up against. So that was immediately tying it to a purpose.
• 11:25
  Speaker 6: That's a really big clue.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: A big clue, because the service the discoverability company advertises
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: is that it helps clients, individuals, or businesses get themselves
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: ranked higher in search engine results, SEO, or search engine optimization.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: You probably know that the way we all search for
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: information online has changed dramatically in the last couple of years.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: AI chatbots like Claude, ChatGBT, and Gemini are increasingly the
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: ones answering our questions, rather than the old Google search.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: We don't even have to look at the original sources
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: the AI pulls from. We can just read the AI's
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: interpretation of whatever it's reading on the internet. Which means
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: that people are trying more and more to get their
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: own websites and information read by the AI bots. Like,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: if you run a lawn mowing company in Tucson, you're
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: going to want your company to come up if someone
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: asks Claude what's the best lawn mowing company in Tucson.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: Even if it doesn't link to your site, you want
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Claude to offer up your name. It seems like this
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: is the kind of service the discoverability company was offering,
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: helping people and businesses get discovered through AI. And Jeremy,
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: the AI sleuth, told me that could be a reason
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: for creating these fake local news outlets.
• 12:36
  Speaker 6: If you just make a believable-looking AI-generated news website, to
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: a machine at least, it makes you look like a
• 12:43
  Speaker 6: more authoritative person to search engines. Like that's the entire
• 12:47
  Speaker 6: goal here. It's just like a very weird thing. It's
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: like this new world we're entering where it's like AI
• 12:53
  Speaker 6: writing for AI.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: We found that the discoverability company was based in Philadelphia,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: and it also appeared to be the project of one person,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: a man named Drew Chapin. One guy responsible for all
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: of these weird fake news sites. Drew Chapin. I'm curious
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: of like what you think this scheme run by Drew Chapin,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: like what it amounts to, like, is it fraudulent?
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: A lot of people are making a generated content right now.
• 13:21
  Speaker 6: So I don't want to like make a huge values
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: judgment on like what Drew is doing here. I think
• 13:28
  Speaker 6: it's just like tricky.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: And even though these websites are making up fully fake people,
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: you don't think that's That's that bad? No, I think
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: that's bad.
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: I have a big problem with fake people. I think
• 13:41
  Speaker 6: that that's like the most offensive thing to me is
• 13:43
  Speaker 6: like the fake reporters and presenting this. Like, that's what
• 13:46
  Speaker 6: bothers me for sure.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, it would make sense that that offends
• 13:51
  Speaker 6: you as a journalist because it offends me. Fake people
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: offend me.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: I looked up Drew Chapin. On his personal website, his
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: bio says, I ran an ad tech company that failed
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: and I'm candid about why. So I googled, Drew Chapin,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: failed company. I found a Department of Justice press release
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: from 2021. It said, San Francisco CEO sentenced to three
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: years for scamming banks and investors. It turns out, Drew
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: had been convicted of wire fraud, securities fraud, and bank fraud,
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: and had served time in federal prison for conning people
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: out of more than $ 8 million. After a quick break,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: our mystery continues. I had identified the man who appeared
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: to be behind this national network of fake local news outlets,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Drew Chapin. And he just so happened to have previously
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: defrauded investors and banks out of millions of dollars. He'd
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: done time in prison, and now that he was out,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: it looked like he was attempting a second act by
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: running some kind of search engine optimization company. I called
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: reporter Kate Payne to tell her what I'd found.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: This is so weird. Every part of this story, I
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: feel like, just keeps getting....
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Kate, who'd been doing her own reporting, told me she'd
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: found a clue of her own. A clue that seemed
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: extra relevant in light of my discovery about Drew's criminal past.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Wow. Kate had noticed, even though the hundreds of articles
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: on these sites were mostly attributed to fictional reporters, once
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: in a while.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: The byline on a story would be a real person's name.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Though those real people weren't journalists. They were also people,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: like Drew Chapin, who'd been convicted or accused of fraud
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: in court. She found nine names like this on the
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: fake sites. So, a white-collar criminal running a company to
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: help people get discovered online was creating fake news outlets
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: with the names of other white-collar criminals peppered throughout. it
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: certainly seemed like some kind of new scheme was taking
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: place here. I needed to learn more about Drew Chapin's past.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: What exactly had he done to land himself in prison?
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: And was it connected to what he was doing now
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: with these fake news sites? I found out that in 2014,
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: Drew founded an online advertising company. It was called Benja,
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: and it was based in San Francisco. Benja created technology
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: for online ads that allowed customers to buy a product
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: within the ad itself. without having to leave the site
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: they were visiting and go somewhere else to make the purchase.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: It seems like a great idea. Several experienced Silicon Valley
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: investors agreed and put their money in Benja. The problem was,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: once the company launched, no one was really using it.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: According to court documents, to keep the company going, Drew
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: began manufacturing several lies to fool his investors into thinking
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: that the company was doing better financially than it actually was.
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: I'm unfortunately the one who unearthed the entire enchilada.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I spoke to someone who worked with Drew back then.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: His name is Joe Alouf. His LinkedIn describes him as
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: a turnaround executive. When Drew's company started showing signs of
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: financial trouble, Joe was brought in by the board to
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: try and save it. When Joe got to work, he
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: asked Drew for access to Benja's accounting system, a very
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: normal thing for Joe. He says Drew kept finding reasons
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: to delay giving him that access.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: You know, it's on my list of things to do
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: and no problem. And, you know, I just have been swamped.
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: Completely reasonable set of reasons, but it's not that complicated
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: to give somebody access.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: It raised a red flag is what you're saying.
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: It's not just a red flag. I've been doing this
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: for a long time. So I have kind of a
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: nose for these things. It's like something is going on.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Once Joe got inside the system, he started piecing together
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: the extent of Drew's lies. Joe told me Drew had
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: started faking invoices, lying about revenue.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: He impersonated customers. He impersonated sales.
• 18:10
  Speaker 7: He then used all of that to generate financial statements
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: and then used those financial statements in order to raise money.
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: And he succeeded in doing it.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: So how did he make up these customers? He was
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: showing fake emails or what did that look like?
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: He actually went beyond that because, you know, the bank
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: responds to their due diligence, will call customers.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Joe explained how a firm that was giving money to
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Benjo wanted to call one of the customers Drew said
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: they had a big contract with. Normal due diligence. The
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: customer in this case was Nike. The problem was there
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: was no contract with Nike. Drew made it up. So
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: instead of giving the bank a contact at Nike, Drew
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: gave them a phone number of someone he knew and
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: said it was a Nike representative.
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: And the friend was there to take the call.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Impersonating one of these customers, basically.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: Correct.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Correct. Drew had created fictional people. A press release from
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: the U.S. Attorney's Office of California's Northern District says, quote,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: almost all the customers Chapin claimed Benja had were lies.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: When you found out then that he had been lying
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: to you, to the investors, to others, what was your
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: reaction to that?
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: I didn't believe it.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: And nobody wanted to believe it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: In the beginning, everybody, including myself, just felt this was
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: just sloppy accounting. It's a small company.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: It's a startup.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: Let's just figure it out. Let's clean it up. And
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: let's move on.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: And then to find out it was deliberate, right?
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: I can understand why some executives may decide to do that.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Out of desperation... What we're going.
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: To do, we're going to cook the books. But what
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: was going to be the end game?
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: I talked to a few of the investors Drew defrauded
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: out of money. Again, it was more than $ 8 million.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: I wanted to know if they saw any connection between
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: what Drew Chapin had done to them and whatever he
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: was up to now with the fake news sites. None
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: wanted to have their voices used, but one is letting
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: me quote them anonymously. They said they put this chapter
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: behind them and don't want any of it coming back
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: to them. This is a very experienced investor in tech
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: companies who lost over $ 100, 000 in Drew's startup, money they'll
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: never get back. The investor said they have never encountered
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: this level of fraud in their career before or since.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: When I asked what they thought Drew was trying to
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: do now with these fake AI news sites, they said, quote,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: I think he's a pathological liar, and so it doesn't
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: surprise me that he's trying to do something equally shady again.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: The investor went on, But when I presented this idea
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: to Joe Alouf, He thought there was one key difference
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: between the lies Drew told with Benja and what he's
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: doing now with these AI sites.
• 21:35
  Speaker 5: As long as it's not illegal, I don't have a
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: problem with what he's doing.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: My problem as a journalist, you know, and I know
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: I'm coming at this with some bias, but like impersonating
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: local news outlets seems bad to me. Does it seem
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: bad to you?
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: It's bad. Oh, it seems horrible. I would have thought
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: it's illegal, but apparently it isn't.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: So far, there are no laws about creating AI newsrooms
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: and fake reporters and passing them off as real online.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: This year, the New York legislature did pass a bill
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: that would require news outlets to disclose when content is
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: generated by AI or face a fine. But as of now,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: the bill is sitting on the governor's desk, unsigned. And
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: who knows if courts would even let that fly under
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: the First Amendment.
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: Even though... It's completely deceptive. There is absolutely nothing that
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: can be done about it.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: As Joe had asked when he found out about Drew's
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: first fakery with Benja, what was going to be the endgame,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: I had the same question about the South Florida Standard
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: and all the other fake news websites. What was the
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: endgame here? What was their purpose? I came across another
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: fact about Drew that seemed like it might answer that question.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: I saw that Drew was a member of an organization
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: called the White Collar Support Group. It's a group of
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: convicted white-collar criminals, or justice-impacted individuals, as their website puts it,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: that help each other in their post-prison lives. The founder
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: of the group told The New Yorker in 2021 that
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: it was ethics rehab for guys detoxing from power and influence.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: On the group's website, it says, Our members have a
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: desire to take responsibility for our actions and the wreckage
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: we caused, make amends, and move forward in a new
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: way of life centered on hope, care, compassion, tolerance, and empathy.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: But the members of this group, they also have a
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: lot of negative coverage of them online, coming up in
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: search results and chatbot answers when you enter their names.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: And I saw some videos where Drew gave presentations to
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: the group, they're on YouTube, on how to handle this
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: very topic.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: Your content strategy starts with knowing the story you want
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: to tell.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Drew explained strategies for how to bump up more positive
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: results and bump down the negative ones, about their crimes
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: or imprisonment. And when I saw this, Drew's involvement with
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: the white-collar support group, his presentations to its members about
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: how to quote-unquote manage their reputations online, the AI news
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: sites started to make more sense. Remember, Kate Payne had
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: found the names of people convicted or accused of fraud
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: on the fake news websites. These were likely people Drew
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: knew from the support group. who he was trying to
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: help with their SEO or chatbot results. And poking around more,
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: I also found articles on some of Drew's sites that
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: were entirely about other people convicted of fraud. On one
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: fake site, the New York Evening Mail, there was an
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: article with advice from a PR executive named Andrew Garson.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: Garson was a Hollywood exec who pled guilty to defrauding
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: his former employers out of more than $ 3.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: 5 million.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: Among other things, he got Mindy Kaling to do an
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: ad campaign for a wine company. Anyway, I hope you
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: guys are thirsty, because I brought wine. But his bosses
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: never approved the campaign, so she made the ads.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Actually, Mindy, there is an easier way.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: And then didn't get paid. Barefoot wine to go. The
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: article about Garson on the fake news website mentioned none
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: of that. Instead, the headline was, Andrew Garson on how
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: AI is disrupting PR. It was basically an interview with him,
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: touting his expertise about how AI will never replace the
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: human touch in PR. It had a bunch of quotes
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: from Garson, sounding knowledgeable. I saw that he linked to
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: the article on his personal website as well. But, of course,
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: the reporter who supposedly wrote this article about Garson, someone
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: named Terrence Washington, was not a real person. So Garson
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: never did an interview with him, never gave him these quotes.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: After everything I'd learned... It seemed pretty clear to me
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: that Drew was trying to use these fake news sites
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: to help improve the reputations of his clients, at least
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: some of whom seemed to have been convicted of fraud,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: who Drew likely knew through the white-collar support group. These
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: sites could be places to seed positive stories about them
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: in the midst of innocuous local news stories to try
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: and trick chatbots and sarjans to treat them as legit.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: It was time to talk to Drew myself. I wanted
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: to see if he'd confirm this was the scheme he
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: was running. and what he had to say about it. Drew,
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: how's it going?
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: Good to meet you.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Zach, thanks for doing this. Of course, of course.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: How was your ride?
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: He was surprisingly game to talk. I had sent him
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: a note saying I wanted to ask about his business.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: I didn't mention the AI sites directly, and asked if
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: I could come meet him in Philadelphia. He said, no problem.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: So I got a train ticket and met him at
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: his office. This was back in April. He was friendly, smiling,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: confident seeming. He was clean-cut, but laid-back, calm, and professional.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: He brought me to a conference room he booked for us,
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: and we sat down across from each other. I noticed
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: he had a notebook with him, and he started flipping
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: through it. There were multiple pages of notes. I guess
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: he really prepared for this. Soon after we started talking,
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: without my asking, Drew offered up the story of his
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: arrest in November 2020.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: I'm asleep at 6 a.m. There's a big knock at
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: the door. I have no idea what's going on. I
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: go downstairs. There are 12 FBI agents in my front
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: yard with their assault rifles drawn, right? Pointed in my face.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: At the time I was 32 years old, I had
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: started a company and the market was rejecting it. You know,
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: the downloads weren't there. The numbers weren't there. The investors
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: weren't there until I started cooking the books. And then,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: you know, and then I was able to keep the
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: lights on for a little while longer. But the market
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: was telling me that this company shouldn't exist. And I
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: was not being honest with myself. And I had engaged
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: in this process that I've now come to understand is
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: called ethical fading, where one little thing leads to another
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: little thing. And before you know it, there are thousands
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: of little things that are pretty serious and material misrepresentations.
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: Drew says he was so laser-focused on his goal, building
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: a successful company, that he started to miss the negative
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: consequences of what he was doing. Ethical fading, it turns out,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: is a real term used by ethicists. After he got
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: out of prison, Drew had to start over from scratch.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: He said he realized how hard it would be to
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: rebuild his life. One search online would bring up the
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: news articles about his arrest, the press release from the
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Department of Justice. That's when he came across the White
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Collar Support Group, a weekly Zoom meeting filled with people
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: just like Drew, who also had the same challenges with
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: their online reputations.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: You feel like you're drowning, you know, more than anything,
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: and you wonder if there's any way out. And I said,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: you know, I want to tell just like my side
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: of who I am. And of course, I made poor choices.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: And of course, I went through this thing. But that doesn't,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: that's not the headline, you know.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: And is that personal experience the thing that motivated you
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: to go into the work that you're doing?
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: Of course.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Drew says that he started having some success in
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: fixing his search results. He couldn't get the articles about
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: his crimes taken down, but he was able to get
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: information he put online about himself, his own website, his LinkedIn.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: ranked above those old articles on Google when someone searched
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: his name. As far as I know, he wasn't using
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: fake AI news sites for this. It was other tactics.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Drew said he learned that having a personal website is
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: hugely useful for search results. They almost always rank highly
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: when you search someone's name. And if you have a blog,
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: putting your name not just in the byline of each post,
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: but at the top of the website really helps boost
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: results too. This isn't a new concept, by the way.
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: There have been services that do this kind of thing
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: for people online for years. But Drew realized that he
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: was surrounded by a group of people who really needed
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: this kind of help. White-collar criminals.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: People in the support group saw it and said, hey,
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: could you help me with this? It's like, you know, like,
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: that looks like you're making progress. I'd like to make
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: similar progress. And that's really how it started.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: This is why he launched the discoverability company. Drew says
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: since he got out of prison three years ago, he's
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: really been trying to turn over a new leaf. In
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: addition to the white-collar support group, he's also spoken at
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: Yale School of Management and UC Berkeley Business School about
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: the bad decisions he made with Benja, warning students about
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: the dangers of faking it until you make it as
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: an entrepreneur. I found that Drew actually has a speaking
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: agent for these gigs and advertises these talks on his LinkedIn.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Now he says he's trying to do things the right
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: way with the discoverability company.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: What I always tell people is like, I'm not going
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: to help you hide from what happened or delete things
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: or anything like that, but I'll help you shape your
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: narrative so that you're comfortable with how it's presented online.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: The way I initially found you and your company is
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: that there are these local news websites that are linked
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: back to your company. There's, like, the Jersey Ledger, the
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: South Florida Standard, the San Francisco Download, the New York
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Evening Mail. There's a few others. I'm curious, like, what
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: those are, what they're for.
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's an experiment. They are all designed to try
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: and figure out, like, how these AI models are logging
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: news sites. It's a very recent experiment. It's in the last,
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: let's say, 90 days or so. where we stood up
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: these things, basically AI summarizers, and just seeing what's going
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: to drive an SEO outcome and why.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: This was the first time I'd told Drew I knew
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: about the fake news websites, and the way he explained
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: them to me, at least at first, made them sound innocuous.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: He told me the sites were like little labs to
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: test different tactics for influencing results in search engines and
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: AI chatbots. He wanted to see how Google and chatbots
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: would respond to different inputs. Like, does a name in
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: the headline get read by the AI more than a
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: name in the story? Does it matter if I add
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: in a link to my company website or not? Drew
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: would use what he learned to advise his clients on
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: how to boost the information they wanted seen online in
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: their own search results. He told me his company runs
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: experiments like this all the time. This one just happened
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: to involve fake newsrooms. But Drew also said that the
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: sites were essentially failures. Maybe there weren't enough people visiting
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: the sites or AI figured out his content was AI generated.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: Whatever the reason, Drew claims the sites didn't really show
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: up in searches and no one was really reading them.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: Turns out Google's just better at AI detection than I am,
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: I guess.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: The thing that struck me about them is that, like, yes,
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: they are these, you know, clearly like AI summaries of
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: local news stories, but they also have, you know, bylines
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: by journalists who have names and have bios. They have
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: email addresses. They have photos. But I guess when I
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: saw these sites, I was thinking like.
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're thinking, fuck that guy.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: Well, I was thinking like it's misrepresenting people. It's putting
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: up fake news outlets, in one case a medical journal.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: And that seemed not great. And I guess it was...
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Were you worried at all that it was, if not.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: Illegal, like... Yeah. I, I just knowing that from the jump,
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: this was an experiment and that it was not a
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: longterm thing and that like we originally intended to run
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: it for like four to six months and like we
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: had a specific list of things that we were trying
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: to figure out.
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: Um, you know, uh, I did not really think about
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: it as like, um, an ethical or moral question or, um,
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: anything like that. Do you now? Uh, yeah. And I,
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: I heard that viewpoint for the first time, um, I
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: think two weeks ago, and realized like, oh yeah, duh.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: And I agree.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: It took me a second to realize what viewpoint Drew
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: was talking about. It was an email from none other
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: than my fellow reporter, Kate Payne from the Florida Trib.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: She had written to Drew and asked him a list
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: of questions like, what is the purpose of all this?
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: And is the South Florida Standard using AI to plagiarize
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: work by Florida journalists?
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: When we got the email, I just, I immediately... cleared
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: my calendar for the next, I think the next day
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and a half. I canceled like the gym the next
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: day and whatever. And I said, oh my God, this
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: is an experiment that really, you know, like I totally
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: understand these points and we need to address this because
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: I don't want to like mess with people. Like this
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: is not what we're trying to do. And this is serious.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: It just like, it really didn't occur to you at
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: all before that?
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: I just really felt like they were not good enough
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: to actually, you know, like... There are people, there are
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: pictures of people. I mean, they're, they look pretty AI
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: generated to me. When I stood it up, I looked
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: at it and said, well, people will know this is not,
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: you know, this is not legitimate.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: How would they, how would they know that?
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: I don't think that it looks like a news site
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: to me. I mean, there's no advertising. There's not like
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: Facebook pages and stuff like that. So I just kind
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: of looked at it and thought like, okay, well, people
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: know that this is not a thing.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: While it does seem true that very few people actually
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: visited these sites, at least some people did and thought
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: they were legit. I saw someone link to one of
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: Drew's sites on a Reddit post. They were directing people
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: to an article on the New York Evening Mail, saying
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: that the outlet, quote, broke down the Wall Street perspective
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: on an economic partnership between Canada and India. And anyway,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Drew telling me that he thought everyone would know that
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: these sites were fake because they looked so AI-generated, while
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: also saying he wanted to fool AI into thinking the
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: websites were real, is a contradiction.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: The difference between writing for people versus writing for robots.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: You were trying to fool the robots, but you weren't
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: trying to fool the people. It seems like, wouldn't those
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: things be the same? Like, if you're trying to trick Google,
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: aren't you also trying to trick people?
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: I suppose. I suppose.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Why have the fake reporters to begin with? And why,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: you know, if you just want to stand up a
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: news aggregator that's AI-generated, like, that's one thing. But why
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: have like the fictional people.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Totally understand that. And, and one of the
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: changes that we made right away and like immediately across
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: the whole network was changing the articles going forward to
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: be written, written by like such and such staff or whatever.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: But there's no staff.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I know.
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: But like, but just trying to remove like, this is,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: this isn't people, you know.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: Nowhere on the sites did it say they were AI generated.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: I wanted to ask about one that Just was like
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: an anomaly to me. But there was like a Hawaii
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: medical journal one.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: Hawaii medical journal. Because that one seems really dicey, right?
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: Because it's like medical advice. There are fictional doctors listed
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: on the site as authors, you know, with bios.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: That's a good note.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: That is news to me on the doctors. I'm going
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: to take a look at that.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: Drew was telling me he didn't even know there were
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: fake doctors on this site. he jotted it down in
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: his notebook. It felt like he was using AI as
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: a defense of his deception. Like, the distance between his
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: prompt into Claude and the sites becoming real was large
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: enough that he could avoid taking responsibility for the actual
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: content that was on them, even if that was fake
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: doctors that were out there in public publishing stories for
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: anyone to see. As far as the purpose of the sites,
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: I still didn't know if Drew would admit that he
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: made these fake news sites to boost the reputations of
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: his clients. I asked him about Andrew Garson, the PR
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: guy who duped Mindy Kaling and had a fake interview
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: on one of Drew's sites. I mean, let's just take
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: this like Andrew Garson example. Like in the New York
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: Evening Mail, there's a headline, Andrew Garson on how AI
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: is disrupting PR. What was the experiment here with Andrew?
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: Well, the experiment is.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Because you know Andrew, right?
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I do know Andrew, yeah. So the experiment is,
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: all right, how difficult would it be to get these
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: new pages indexing for Andrew's specific results?
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: It's another experiment, he said. Like, why not test out
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: if the sites could influence an actual person's search results
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: and try it with someone he knows? And Drew was
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: insistent on the experiment part of this. He says he
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: was not running a scheme on behalf of Andrew Garson
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: or anyone else. He wasn't trying to use the fake
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: news sites to actually obscure any individual's past. He claims
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: he was just using the sites as petri dishes to
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: develop general tactics for SEO and chatbot results to use
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: in his business. That may seem like a delicate distinction.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: But it's one that Drew wouldn't budge from, no matter
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: how much I pushed him on it. There wasn't an
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: element of like seeing if they could be Holmes to
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: do some of this reputation management?
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: No, I understand how that would be. That's like a
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: logical conclusion. Those are just like friendly people that we
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: have some agency and ability to experiment with. And yeah,
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: we just have willing participants who are willing to try
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: some things out.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: I reached out to Andrew Garson to ask if Drew
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: was telling the truth about this. He confirmed that he
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: knew Drew, but he declined to talk more. Drew tells
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: the story of his crime, when his startup failed and
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: he went to prison, as a story about self-deception. Ethical fading,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: he says. One small lie, then another, until you're somewhere
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: you never meant to be. He tells it to college students.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: He tells it on podcasts. He told it to me.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: So this scheme with the fake news sites, was it
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: some version of that same ethical fading? Ripping stories right
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: from other news outlets, seeding the sites with positive articles
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: about people who'd been convicted of fraud, written by reporters
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: who don't exist. Maybe Drew can write it all off
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: as not a big deal because, he says at least,
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: the sites didn't work the way he wanted them to.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: The search engines and AI weren't reading them. Really, no
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: one was reading them. So what's the harm? But if
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: they had worked, if reporter Kate Payne and I hadn't
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: reached out when we did to ask questions and point
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: out the issues with these sites, how far would he
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: have taken this? Maybe the AI of it all does
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: help mask the ethical fading. As Drew pointed out, he
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: didn't write the stories or invent the fake reporters. The
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: AI did when he prompted it to. He wasn't trying
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: to fool humans, only robots.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: We're tinkering, but forget that you're tinkering in public. And
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: if you're successful, you could actually be shaping somebody's opinion
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: on something.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Plus, it took no time at all. It was all
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: so easy.
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: Sounds like that's a lot of work, but it's... Truly
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: not that much work.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: Before I left his office, Drew showed me how easy
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: it was to create a whole phony news outlet. He
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: entered a three-sentence prompt into Claude to create a local
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: Philadelphia sports blog. And the AI built it for us,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: right then and there.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Hit enter. So we're watching the code work.
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: A fully designed news site, complete with branding, articles, fake
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: reporters with names and bios, a mission statement for the outlet.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: From start to finish, it took 20 minutes to make.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: and it looked totally real to me. Watching the whole
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: process play out in front of me, it creeped me out. Yeah,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: let's take it down. And just as simple as the
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: prompt was to set it up, he entered one into
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: Claude to take it down.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: The prompt is, please take this website down, destroy the code,
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: completely dump it.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: And the other websites, you think you'll take them down?
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, we're pretty much through with them.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Okay. Can we shake on it?
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Okay. The websites are coming down. We have shook. Drew
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: did take the sites down, and as of this week,
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: they still are. But that original website reporter Kate Payne found,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: the South Florida Standard? Now, if you visit that site,
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: it redirects you to Kate's outlet, the Florida Trib, a
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: real bona fide newsroom full of human reporters telling human stories.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: I asked Kate what she thought of that move. She
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: wrote back, maybe he feels guilty about it after all.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: That's Zach St. Louis, a producer on our show. Thanks
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: to Kate Payne from the Florida Trib, we used some
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of her reporting for this episode. And Kate also did
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: a story about the South Florida Standard and Drew's company
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: for her outlet, which used some of Zach's reporting. We'll
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: link to it in the show notes. If you dug
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: this story, please follow Question Everything on your podcast app
• 42:19
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• 42:23
  Speaker 1: us on Instagram at questioneverything.podcast. And if you have any
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: tips about weird stuff you know about that's happening... If
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: they get new sites or people up to no good
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: or anything else, I'm on signal at brihreed.
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: 45.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: B-R-I-H-R-E-E-D.45. I edited today's episode along with executive editor Kevin Sullivan.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Robin Simeon and I are the executive producers of Question Everything.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Our team also includes producers Sam Egan and Tracy Hunt,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney, and associate producer
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Kevin Shepard. This episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins, mixing
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Matt McGinley. Evie Kwong runs our social media. Our partners
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Ajmera, Natalie Hill, and
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Jennifer Farrow. Special thanks also to Blake Morrison. We'll see
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: you next week.