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Am I Dating You? · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: I got weekly complaints, and then it became too daily complaints,
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: and at some point it was like I'd get several
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: per day. So over the time it was like literally
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: thousands that I basically had to sort out with and
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: it became a huge burden of my time on my
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: mental health.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Welcome to The Knife. I'm Hannah Smith. I am patia Eton.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: This week we speak with Alec Corros. Alec has been
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the victim of online cameras for almost twenty years, and
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  Speaker 1: we talked to him about how that happened and continues
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  Speaker 1: to happen and all of the different ways that this
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: has affected his life.
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  Speaker 3: Aleck is a professor at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.
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  Speaker 3: We actually mentioned him in a previous off Record episode
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  Speaker 3: one two, and then he reached out to us. Turns
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  Speaker 3: out one of his students as a listener of The Knife,
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  Speaker 3: and we are really excited to talk with Alec today.
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  Speaker 1: As a quick note, Aleck had just finished speaking at
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a conference when we interviewed him, and so his voice
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  Speaker 1: is just a little bit scratchy. Let's get into the interview.
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  Speaker 3: Alec, thank you so much for joining us on the Knife.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're so excited to speak with you. I mean,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: when Hannah told me that you had emailed her after
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: our off record episode featuring your story came out, I
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, that's incredible.
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  Speaker 2: It was cool. I actually had a student who was
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: a big time in your podcast, and she was excited.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: She send me a message and she's saying like, this
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: is really cool. I love this podcast and your story
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: was featured, and so she was very happy, and so
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I listened to it and I thought it was awesome.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: So it's a delight to be here. So she actually
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: thought I could reach out and be able to tell
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  Speaker 2: you a bit more about my story.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're so excited about that. As you mentioned, we
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: did touch on your story a little bit in a
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: previous off record. It started because I happened upon a
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  Speaker 3: Reddit post that you made from twenty fifteen that is
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  Speaker 3: titled for the past eight years my photos have been
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  Speaker 3: used by romance scammers aka kat fishers. I really need
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  Speaker 3: Reddit's help to have this get the attention of Facebook.
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  Speaker 3: So we talked about what we're able to find online
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  Speaker 3: and through interviews, but now here you are able to
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  Speaker 3: tell us more about your experience, and we're going to
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  Speaker 3: dig into that identity you know, fraud situation that happened
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  Speaker 3: to you personally, but as well we're going to talk
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  Speaker 3: like more broadly about identity fraud on the Internet and
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  Speaker 3: how AI has really come to change that and progress that.
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  Speaker 3: But first let's go back to the beginning. Can you
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  Speaker 3: tell us, you know, how did this all start for
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: you personally? Like what was going on in your life
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  Speaker 3: that first time that you were scammed? You know, how
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: did you first become aware that this was happening.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Sure, I'm happy to go back, you know, if we
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: kind of think collectively, going back to around two thousand
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  Speaker 2: and seven, like Facebook was pretty new, like two thousand
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  Speaker 2: and six ish. YouTube I think was two thousand and five.
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  Speaker 2: The social web was very very new. I was presenting
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  Speaker 2: a lot, I was spending, you know, I was a professor,
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  Speaker 2: probably eight or nine years at that point, so fairly
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: still relatively early in my career. I was in Barcelona
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: for a conference. I was married at that point. I
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: was three or four years into being married. Back then,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't really care about who posted on my Facebook,
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  Speaker 2: So it was the settings were quite open, and people
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  Speaker 2: posted things and strangers could read your posts and so on,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: and people could interact, and you just weren't thinking about
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: that sort of thing, and so a lot of my
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  Speaker 2: photos and my profile was certainly open to the world.
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  Speaker 2: Very different today, and this was like it's Barcelona, but
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  Speaker 2: I live in Canada, so you know, it was early then,
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  Speaker 2: but late at night here in Canada, and I got
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  Speaker 2: these frantic messages from my wife at the time, who
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  Speaker 2: was quite upset about these. It was from someone named
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  Speaker 2: I think it was Lori. I won't share the last name,
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  Speaker 2: but it was someone who shared a number of posts
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  Speaker 2: who they were really mad at me because I apparently
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  Speaker 2: was in a relationship with this person, that this person
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  Speaker 2: thought I was in a relationship with them, Like I
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  Speaker 2: did really know what was going on at that time,
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  Speaker 2: but they were they were mad because this person had
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  Speaker 2: found out apparently that I was married, that I had
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  Speaker 2: a child, that my wife at the time was pregnant
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  Speaker 2: with the second and so I received this very frantic
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  Speaker 2: email because I hadn't read these posts yet, but I
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  Speaker 2: just heard from again my partner that you know, she
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  Speaker 2: was quite upset at me, and like, what's going on
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  Speaker 2: and then even my brother called and he's like, what's
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  Speaker 2: going on here? And you know, just kind of been disbelieved,
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  Speaker 2: like what's been going on? And it was really confusing
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  Speaker 2: at that point, And I looked at the at the post,
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  Speaker 2: I had no idea who this person was or why
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  Speaker 2: they were thinking this, and at the time I really
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  Speaker 2: just dismissed it as some sort of prank, Like I
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  Speaker 2: didn't think that this person really truly believed that they
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  Speaker 2: were in a relationship with me. I thought they were just,
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  Speaker 2: you know, someone playing a joke on me or something.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the posts or they're coming through his
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  Speaker 1: posts on your page or messages, is that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like there were posts on my public page so
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  Speaker 2: that my partner and my brother could see this, everyone
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  Speaker 2: could see this, so you know, it's my reputation, Like, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: I'm basically there's a scandal on my Facebook page that is,
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  Speaker 2: you know, goes against the reputation and so on.
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  Speaker 1: And do you recall, like not verbatim, but do you
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  Speaker 1: recall what they said? Oh?
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  Speaker 2: It was it was very so much what I said before.
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  Speaker 2: It was just like how, you know, how dare you've
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  Speaker 2: been together for I forget the number of months. You know,
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  Speaker 2: you've been together and you lied to me, and how
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  Speaker 2: could you have had this wife? And I'm pregnant wife
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  Speaker 2: you know at that time as well, like how could
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  Speaker 2: you have done that sort of thing? And so it
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  Speaker 2: was really this sort of sense of betrayal. But again
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  Speaker 2: I thought this was like a prank. And I never
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  Speaker 2: actually spoke to this person beyond this, Like I basically
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  Speaker 2: said a couple of things, stop posting my wall and
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  Speaker 2: blocked them. And then I thought it wasn't like a
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  Speaker 2: big deal, like it was just it. It must have
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  Speaker 2: been a prank.
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  Speaker 3: I think finding yourself in that situation where suddenly someone's
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  Speaker 3: posting on your public Facebook wall that you have been
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  Speaker 3: cheating on your wife essentially, and then your wife at
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: the time calls you. What was that conversation? Like was
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  Speaker 3: she oh it wasn't good.
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  Speaker 2: Worried?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah?
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  Speaker 3: Like what was she like, Hey, what are you doing?
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  Speaker 1: Well?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was certainly worried. And the bad thing about
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: it is this person was from I mean, there's lots
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  Speaker 2: of bad things about it, but one of the bad
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  Speaker 2: things about it was it was a person in North Carolina.
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  Speaker 2: I had been there once in my life, and it
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  Speaker 2: just happened to have been in North Carolina for like
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: about ten hours, probably a few months before that, for
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: a speech I gave, So I just happened to have
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  Speaker 2: been in North Carolina, and so it was like, this
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  Speaker 2: is really strained. But this person thought we were in
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: a long term relationship. And so, yeah, it wasn't a
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  Speaker 2: very pleasant conversation because you know, this is the first
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  Speaker 2: that this ever happened, and you know, I'm away at
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  Speaker 2: a conference, so I can't be there to like talk
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  Speaker 2: about it. So we're on the phone, we're at different
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  Speaker 2: time zones, so it was very uncomfortable and really left
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't comfortable, and you know, after we kind of
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  Speaker 2: looked at the facts and so on, like it was
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  Speaker 2: pretty easy to see that this was not something I
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  Speaker 2: had done. And I do believe, I think from what
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  Speaker 2: I remember, and again this is two thousand and seven,
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  Speaker 2: so I don't remember everything, but I do believe that
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  Speaker 2: this person ended up also messaging my wife at the
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  Speaker 2: time as well and trying to like work this up,
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  Speaker 2: which made sense, like this is what you probably do
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  Speaker 2: if you were actually in this situation, like you know,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: to compare notes and that sort of thing, and the
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  Speaker 2: notes didn't match up from what I understand or what
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  Speaker 2: I remember. I wasn't privy to those particular conversations, but
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  Speaker 2: you know, it was just sort of a settle thing.
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  Speaker 2: We just you know, a day day or two beyond that,
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't it wasn't a thing. I think. It was
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  Speaker 2: just sort of like the strange thing. It was more like,
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  Speaker 2: who's this person pranking? And why why are they doing
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  Speaker 2: this on my wall?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? Because it seemed so unbelievable.
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  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, And so it was more likely that it
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  Speaker 2: was someone who didn't like me for whatever reason, and
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  Speaker 2: you know.
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  Speaker 3: Knows was like doing this mean thing to publicly shame
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  Speaker 3: you and try to, you know, write cause trouble in
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  Speaker 3: your life. But did you have any questions for her?
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  Speaker 3: Does your wife have any questions for as far as
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  Speaker 3: like when was the last time you saw him in person?
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  Speaker 2: So this person did? I do remember that this person
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: did say that they never saw me face to face,
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  Speaker 2: and so even had I been in North Carolina, like,
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  Speaker 2: they wouldn't have seen me anyways, But at that time,
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  Speaker 2: it just wasn't plausible enough to ask more questions, which
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  Speaker 2: saw of big things, So there was so it just
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  Speaker 2: kind of left very like in subsequent matters. When this happened,
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  Speaker 2: there are way more questions because it started happening happening,
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  Speaker 2: there's there were more patterns here, more questions to ask
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  Speaker 2: because it became you know, this is not just happening once.
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  Speaker 2: It's happening a bunch of times.
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  Speaker 1: But in this first time that it happened. Is your
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  Speaker 1: primary sort of takeaway, This is a prank. This is
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  Speaker 1: a one off, and not that someone's been duped.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, there was. There was no suspicion until years later,
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  Speaker 2: like that this was actually something that was starting like this,
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  Speaker 2: This was just the beginning of something, and that this
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  Speaker 2: may have not have been the first one. You know,
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  Speaker 2: who knows how many times had it happened before that,
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  Speaker 2: but the person never contacted me, So this could have
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  Speaker 2: happened been happening for you years before that. But for
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  Speaker 2: some reason, the scammer in this case not only used
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  Speaker 2: my photos, but they also used my name that wasn't
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  Speaker 2: very typical at the time.
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  Speaker 3: Gotcha, So that's how she was able to track you down? Yes,
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  Speaker 3: because the scammer used your real name?
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  Speaker 1: Right?
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  Speaker 3: Can you talk us through when you start to realize
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: that this is not an isolated incident, Like when does
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: that occur?
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  Speaker 2: I think it was like it wasn't until like this
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  Speaker 2: just sort of stopped happening, like it was it was
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  Speaker 2: the one time, and then I got infrequent messages once
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: in a while. But it wasn't until two or three
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  Speaker 2: years that it really started to accelerate, and so I
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  Speaker 2: got weekly complaints, and then it became too daily complaints,
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  Speaker 2: and at some point it was like I'd get several
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: per day, and so over the time it was like
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  Speaker 2: literally thousands that I basically had had the had had
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  Speaker 2: to sort out with, and it became a huge burden
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  Speaker 2: of my time on my mental health because I'm doing
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  Speaker 2: multiple things there. First of all, you know, I think
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: it was all sorted with my family, like we understood this,
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  Speaker 2: but in many cases their photos were being used, right,
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  Speaker 2: So in some cases it's not just my identity, it's
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  Speaker 2: because some of the photos they had were me of
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  Speaker 2: me with my children and with my partner and with
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  Speaker 2: my parents for instance.
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  Speaker 3: What you're saying is is people I'm guessing mostly women,
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  Speaker 3: reaching out to you saying very similar perhaps to that
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  Speaker 3: first person who you know put it on your Facebook wall,
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  Speaker 3: is that Hey, I think we're in a relationship, or
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: they're reaching out assuming that they've been in some kind
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  Speaker 3: of online relationship with you, and that this is supported
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  Speaker 3: by these Facebook pages that are not yours, but that
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  Speaker 3: when they're sent to you, you recognize that this is you.
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  Speaker 3: This is not just you, but there's another Facebook page
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  Speaker 3: that might be like your brother or parents. Is that correct?
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so there's very different complexities of this. So
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: the people that reached out to me were either people
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: were who were very mad at me that they think
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  Speaker 2: they found the real meat, that I was the one
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  Speaker 2: behind these profiles and so that I set fake profiles
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  Speaker 2: with my face for whatever reason, or sometimes with my
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: own name, like sometimes they'd use my name. You know,
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  Speaker 2: it really depended on how they use this. So people
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  Speaker 2: would be very very mad at me because they think
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: that they found me and they found my real contact
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: information and they found out who I really was, or
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  Speaker 2: they have discovered at some point that my photos were
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: being used. And this was largely due to the number
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: of sort of scammer reveal sites that came up on
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: the web, Like a lot of people who got scammed
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: in this way would create sites that like scam watch
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: and you know, similar varieties to that, which would list scammers,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: and so a lot of victims would come together and
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: see sites like that. So they would see my name
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  Speaker 2: and my face listed on these sites too, you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: for people to avoid or photos to avoid. They'd often
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: say this person, if you've seen these photos, these belong
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: to doctor Ali Corros and he's a professor, and like
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: they'd get the backstory of who I am. So some
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: people would see these stories and then they contact me,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: not mad at me, they'd sort of share their story
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: with me. Sometimes it would be, you know, really sad,
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  Speaker 2: how they've sent a lot of money, they might have left,
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  Speaker 2: their relationship that they might have been in like these.
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  Speaker 2: You know, in one case, someone said that they'd mortgaged
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: their house or they you know, they liquidated their assets
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: because they'd often give all their money to the scammer
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: version of me. And so they were really really in
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: deep and with these particular relationships. And yeah, so it
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: was either mad or sad. And here I'm going to
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: share this story with you so that you can share
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: with others and for you to know or be aware.
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  Speaker 2: And in some cases there's a few and I wouldn't
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: say they're rare, but probably you know, five or ten
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: percent and if not more of those cases, they're not
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: only sharing this for me, but they also had a
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: glimmer of hope like maybe I would be single and
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: available and perhaps interested in them still. And so even
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: though they fell in love with the wrong persona like
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: not my personality, not my words, but just the images themselves,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: somehow they pieced together someone and they felt that it
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: was still possible or feasible to be with me, because
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: again they fell in love with someone who's not me,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: who's not my voice in those cases, but my picture
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: is in something that they sort of pieced together from
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: these scammer calls and so on. And that was kind
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: of the sad part, like there's still some hope, right,
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Like they felt they were heartbroken and really drawn in
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: and they didn't know what to do at that point.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: And as you're becoming more I mean it sounds like
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: you're getting, you know, dozens and then hundreds and thousands
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of people writing to you over time, what what measures
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: do you take earlier on in this whole ordeal to
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: make your public persona online more private.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: So that was the difficult part, right, So there was
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: a choice there because you know, ever you know, people,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: it's easy for people to say, like, you should just
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: lock up all your pictures, and I did. I locked
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: up a lot of pictures. But there was a point
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that if you lock up more pictures, then the people
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: who are looking for you, who need to find you
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: that are in these scams, because the pictures are already out,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: like they're gone, they're already in these databases they're shared
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: by scammers. I mean this is well, we often think,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: like we if you watch the documentary like the cat
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: fishing documentaries and that sort of thing, like where the
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: term comes from and so on, they often project these
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: people as you know, people in the US, for instance,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: who are doing this as something and they might know
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: the person or so on. But the reality is most
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: of these scams are perpetrated by people outside of the US,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: outside of the Canadian or US jurisdiction. And these are
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: criminal activities. I mean this is these are dark terrorist
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: type activities that provide a lot of profit for these groups.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: That it's organized crime. And so you know, there are
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: people who share photos up scammers that they've collected, they've
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: sort of gathered these and they share databases, so the
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: photos are out there already. So part of me is like,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: if I make everything private, they'll never find who I
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: actually am, so the people who need to find me,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: who are being scammed can't find me. And on the
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: other hand, and then I won't know, like it might
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: even get worse for me in some ways. And then
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: if I open it up, of course, then I'm you know,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: more of my photos will be gone. So probably the
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: biggest choice on that front that I made was just
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: you know, not including children, not you know, being careful
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: in terms of what I share. Before then I didn't
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: really think that's using photos of my children would be
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: as big of a deal as it was. And even
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: thinking like now I have a photo that was used
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: in one of these scams. It was like when my
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: dad passed away in twenty thirteen, my mother's like on
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: his grave basically crying. Right, It's like, it's this incredibly
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: powerful photo, and I think, like, I'm sharing this because
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: I think it's important for me to share with the
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: people that I trust and I love, But that seem
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: like that endearing I'd love that photograph is powerful for
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: someone else to see and to use it in a
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: way that you would portray someone's trust to lie to them,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: and so the power of photos. I was very cautious
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: in terms of what I shared beyond that point.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, because at that point it's like your stuff
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: is already out there.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: So I can imagine that you would rather know if
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: your photos of you, your family, these very personal photos
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: are being used to cause harm and scam people and
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: take their money and abuse them emotionally. I mean, what
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: does that feel like to know that, like your personal photos,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: things that you I think we all think of as ours,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: like this is my family, this is my life, and
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: these are my photos, are being used in that way?
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: Like what does that feel like?
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: Well, it's gross. It's like I don't know how the
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: word to describe it, but you know, it's gross thinking of,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: you know, my children's photos and images being used in
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: these scams. Like it wasn't just the photos, but at
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: some point all right, so the sophisticated scam would be
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: So again it's not just email communication. This is they
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: were using Skype. Back then, it was an often video
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: the scameras typically you would say when when they tried
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: to turn on video, and back then the video was
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: harder to do, like it was more of an excuse
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: that was plausible, like your Skype's not working, my camera's
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: not working, whatever else makes more sense back then. Today
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: it's less, you know, you'd be have more of an
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: expectation for those things to work or to really prove
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: who that is. And of course there's complications with that
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: as well. But again this is this is organized crimes,
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: so it's not a single perpetrator behind this. So there
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: would be sophisticated photos. Take a Facebook profile, so there'd
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: be a fake me with whatever name. I remember one
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: was Alex Gallart, and then they'd take my mother's pictures
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: and then they would connect that to Alex Galler's Facebook profile,
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: and they'd take my daughter's photos and create another profile
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: so on, So there would be this it looks more
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: plausible that this is a real person, and then they
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: connect a bunch of fake profiles so it looks like
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: this person is a real person with a real daughter
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: and so on. Then they have someone talk to the victims,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: not only from the person that's purported to be me,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: but from my mother. So they'd have a mother scammer,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: you know, or someone with a female boye talking to
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: them like it's my mother, and they'd have people talking
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: to them like it's my daughter. And so this really
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: really puts the nails in the coffin in terms of
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: like someone's belief or disbelief around us once you start
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: talking to the entire family. So it's gross on that level,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Like it's not only incredibly powerful for these cameras to
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: do that, because it really did the job to make
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: it like I'm not only talking to you, I'm developing
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: a relationship with your mother, your daughter is saying that
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: she wants to see me, and so on. But to
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: think that my kids, my family's identities were perpetrated and
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: you know and sort of brought into this like that
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: made me carry a lot of guilt around this. And
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: it's just like this is the thing, Like it's fine,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: you're using mine. It's bad enough that you're taking these
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: people for all their money, but those aren't the only victims.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: It's also my family, right, Like I didn't see by
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: myself as a victim, like I see the people that
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: are sending money and so on as a victim. I'm
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: not sure. I'm more of a medium, I guess in
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: some ways than a victim. But because the choices I
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: made in terms of what I put online. It did
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: affect my family and my family dynamics, and you know,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: and in my children's future. I mean, their digital identities
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: are compromised because of things like that as well. So
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I thing we have to think about is, you know,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: of parents or guardians of children in terms of the
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: choices we make and what we share.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean to be fair to you, though, in
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, everyone was putting everything on Facebook.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: We didn't know, right, Yeah, I was in college at
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: that time, and I remember we would I would just
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: be hanging out with my friends. We would just take
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: random pictures of us hanging out. I'd be like, upload
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: fifty pictures to Facebook.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, full albums of a single outing.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for whatever reason. You know you were also
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: doing that like many people, but your photos were seized
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: upon And I'm sure this happened to other people as well,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: But I mean, what a nightmare that is. So I
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: assume you, you know you did do things to try
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: to stop this. Yes, can you walk us through what
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: you did to try to stop the scammers?
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Most of it started on Facebook, and so there's a
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: lot of profiles like you put in my name and
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: you see a bunch of them. But of course all
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: of these people also gave me the profiles because it
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: was really hard to find, Like if I'm looking for
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: my face, it was hard to do that for quite
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: a while until Google brought in a tool called reverse
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: image search, where you could basically put in a photo
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: of yourself and then it would basically reverse search those images.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: So you could find but you couldn't find really Facebook
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: profiles at the time, but you could find, you know,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: other websites, and we can talk more about those as well.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: But I would report the sites to Facebook and say
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: this is not me. Sometimes they would take down the
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: ones that were my name and my photos. So if
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: there was a profile that was like a fake profile,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: that would violate the terms of service, and so they
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: would take it down. And there were my photographs but
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: not my name, so it was this Alex Gallard out
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: there with my names. It didn't fit within their terms
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: of service to actually take that down because this person
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: is not impersonating me, even though they're using my photos,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: they're not impersonating me using their name by my name,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and so this sort of fell in this weird loophole.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: So I had all of these profiles that I couldn't
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: take down that were clearly photos that I've used before that,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: and if you put the dates on them, you could
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: trace them back to me as being the first one
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: to put them on if you look at facebooks on
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: dating mechanisms. But they still wouldn't take these things down.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: So I was fairly connected in the sort of the
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: social tech world and most of the websites at the time,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: social websites I could contact, but Facebook I couldn't, Like
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: there was no way to get through that wall. And
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: still today I think it's really difficult. But every once
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: in a while I'd go and I'd speak at tech
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: conferences and so on, and I'd find someone there who
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: worked for Facebook, and I'd talk to them and tell
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: them what's going on, and you know, they'd have a
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Facebook email address and so on, and I tell them
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: and they'd be very like, Oh, this can't be happening.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: We've we've got to do something about this, and they say, email,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: meme will fix this. This happened three or four times,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: and we might have a couple of communications the most,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: and then it just went like silence, like they ghosted me.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: After that, nothing ever came of that thing. And I
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: feel and I'm not going to you know, libel myself
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: or libel anyone else, but I always have the suspicion
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: like this is happening way more than it should be,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: and I can't see that there wouldn't be a way
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: to stop this, Like even back then, AI would have
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: been able to duplicate or detect where these profiles being
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: built from, whether being mass produced or they taking images
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: from elsewhere. I know that there was a technology there
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: to deal with it. But when you're a publicly traded
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: company and you know you have my profile and the
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: thousand duplicates of it, that's going to do good for
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: your shareholders, and that's going to look kind of nice
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: that you are having a lot of growth even though
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you know a huge number of those profiles are fake.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, so there's lots of reasons why Facebook, in
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: my opinion, would not want to necessarily bring light to
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: this issue. And at the same time, you know, admit
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: that all of these profiles or a lot the growth
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: that they're seeing here are from fake profiles that they're
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: building on a daily basis.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And so since you didn't get a lot of help
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: from Facebook, or at least in the way that you
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: had hoped. For whatever reasons, you end up creating a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: website that you would send to people who reached out
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: to you. How did you decide what to put on
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the website?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: By that point, when I put out a story, people
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: would see this and get interviewed by either the Canadian
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: CBC or a few American outlets. There's Australian outlets and
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: so on, and so a lot of this got into
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the news. Most of that was either my reflection, so
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: I created blog posts about my experiences. There were other
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: people who wrote things about it at the same time,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: but most of it was probably media articles from reputable
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: news sources about this, and so that was kind of
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: the main thing, just to provide you know, first of all,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I think on the website, and it wasn't much of
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: a website. It was just simply like, if you're reading this,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: there's a good chance that you may have in fallen
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: victim to someone and explained who I was, and then
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: I wanted to give them credible evidence in terms of
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: like these are reputable news sources that you can read
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and try to figure it out yourself. If you need
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: to contact me, contact me. So it was just sort
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: of like before you contact me angry or if you
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: or upset or whatever it might be, read these things
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: over and hopefully this can support you, because you know
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: otherwise I was just trying to explain this over and
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: over again to someone and in many cases again if
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: they were mad or if they didn't believe me, spending
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: way too much time on a daily basis trying to
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: convince someone that I wasn't the person scamming them For me,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: It was a timesaver. At the same time, I think
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: it was good for others to be able to read
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: and sort these things out for themselves, to get some answers.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm curious, did anyone reach out to you,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: like via call, text message, just try to see you
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: in person? Oh?
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Sometimes threats like I think I saw,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: I was just reading one and trying to going through
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: a bunch of them, you know, someone who is in
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: total disbelief. And I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. And
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: someone said something at the end of their message like
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: I know this is you. I'll see you soon in Reagina.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: And this was the one of the few male ones
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: that were related to this, because it didn't have to
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: do with a romance scam, but it was someone who
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: believed I got into some sort of trade partnership with them.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: It was someone from Russia. So I'm constantly google translating
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: this from Russia and this this person, I think that
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: their name was also Alex and they were sending me
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: like legal documents and so on in terms of what
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I had done to them. And then they would actually
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: send emails to my like my boss, the presidents and
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: provost of my university, and so there's me like you know,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: and then yeah, at some point that was in a
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: tenured then a non tenured like a non tenured position,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: and then tenured position, but early in my career, and
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: so you know, I'm having to explain to my pres
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: it in provost ultimately or to my dean, like what's
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: this all about? Right, I'm going to have to go
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: through that. And that continued up until like until two
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: years ago we get a new president, you know, so
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I'm having to talk to the new president both this
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: as well. It's embarrassing and also you know, potentially damaging
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: if this person's saying that one of your professors is
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: this sort of evil you know, money launderer or whatever
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: it might be. It gets old really quickly.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I can imagine. And you know the first time
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: you became aware of this, this is in like two
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: thousand and seven, So this is years and years of
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: you dealing with this, your time, energy. Also, it affecting
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: your life, your relationships, your work. The last time you
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: spoke about it that I could find at least like
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: in an article was twenty twenty around then, and you
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: said at that time that it was still impacting your
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: daily life. How do things stand now? Is this still
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: happening regularly?
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Surprisingly, not as much like, I don't think it's stopped.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: I think AI has done a big change to what's
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: happening here. I don't think anyone scamming these days needs
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: my photos anymore. They don't need anyone's photos anymore. The
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: fact that we're able to generate photos that are incredibly realistic,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: that are of the same person, that you have a
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: continuous or you know, a profile that looks the same
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: in multiple photos, that you can create, video, that you
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: can create deep fake calls. All of the technology has
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: shifted in the last few years, and not just since
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Chat GBT, Previous to that, even previous years before that,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: they were using virtual cams. So right now, I know
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: that we're looking on a virtual cameraight now, looking at
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: each other. But truth be told, you don't for one
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: hundred percent, no, this is me like you. You may
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: not know this is me, Like I can use technology
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: today that would be incredibly convincing that this is I'm
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: using someone else's space at face. You see this in
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: bank fraud, you see this in romance scams. It's incredibly
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: convincing and really difficult to tell the difference anymore. Like
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: there was a time where I would get emails from
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: fake victims. Someone would say, I'm being victimized by this,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: and what I need from you is a picture of
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: you holding a newspaper. I was saying, why would you
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: need that from me?
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Wow?
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: And so I think this is a victim like wanting
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: me to do this for someone they're trying to convince, right,
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, no.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: It was a scammer trying to get trying to make
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you think that they were a victim so that they
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: could get a picture to convince another victim.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly right.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So stuff like that so tricky because some of
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: the photoshops that I saw were terrible. The videos that
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I saw were terrible that they were so like not
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: convincing at that point when you're truly in love. Like
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: basically I saw communications from some you know of these
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: victims who for the longest time they talk text, but
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: then they'd start demanding video like phone was easy, but
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I've never seen you on video. You always see your
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: webcam is broken and so on. And then so what
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: they would often do is these they'd use. They'd take
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: a video of me, like I've got tons of videos
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: of me lecturing because I taught online courses for a
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: long time and a lot of those were open. You
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: just need a few seconds without audio of me looking
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: like I'm attempting to come onto a webcam and then
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: going off, Like a few seconds might be enough to
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: convince a person that I really saw you. Because but
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: at the same time, you're using a virtual cam, so
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: rather than me using a live cam, I'm just using
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: a virtual cam. There's like tools like mini caam or
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: obs or whatever else that you can use, so you're
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: playing video over the webcam versus actually live a live stream.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: And so that was used for some time.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: They would have a video that looked like you were
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: trying to connect and then it would.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Drop out, Yeah, exactly.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: But that was enough to be like, well, see, look me,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I'm here, I'm a person, I'm trying to connect.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, yeah, And so you'd see that for seconds,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: you don't say word. But again, for the people who
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: really want to believe that, they want to believe, they
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: want to know this is true, and so that's enough
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: to convince them. And you know, if you're not going
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: to be hyper critical when you're vulnerable.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. Did you ever find out who was behind this?
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Was it one person? Was it multiple people behind using
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: your photo specifically to scam thousands of people?
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: So every once in a while I'd be able to
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: talk to a scammer, so in some sort and again
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: this wasn't just one scammer like these were. I can't
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: tell you for sure. It could be dozens, it could
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: be hundreds. But when I did get a chance to
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: talk to a scammer, i'd guilt them. They'd be from
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: certain countries. I'm not going to get into the countries
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: they're from, just because I don't want to racialize these
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: types of scams on but they would be part of
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: a criminal organization. They'd often say that they were the
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: foot soldiers. Like there are people who were in conditions
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: that they're basically forced to do this as part of,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: you know, this organization that they're within, and I'm going
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: to I'm not going to totally let them off the
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: hook in that sense, but there is some coursion that
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: we don't perhaps anticipate or understand, and you know, in
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: this world, like even in some cases from what I
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: understand is some of the people that were victimized, so
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: women in the US, for instance, or in Brazil that
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I ran into like online, when they communicate with me,
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: they became so vulnerable because whether they were coursed or
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: you know, falling in love with the people that were
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: actually behind them. In some cases they'd said I'm not
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: al curos, I'm this person, and then they'd fall in
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: love with this person. They'd you know, they'd actually be
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: vulnerable over these other people that they'd be okay with
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: the fact that it wasn't me in the first place,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: but maybe they'd lose their house, lose all their money,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: are all their financial bearings, and these people would be
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: enlisted to do some of the scams themselves, so they
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: become the mothers and the daughters, you know, So they
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: became part of the project as well, because they're financially
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: and emotionally vulnerable, and so they become part of it.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: So it's not only just foot soldiers.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So they would have lost all of this money to
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: having been scammed and then realized it, and then the
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: scammer would say, we can help you get this money back.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Here's what you have to do.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, so you'd become part of it. So you're most
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: vulnerable because you are connected to this person. And even
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: though they're not the person that they said that they were,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: you still have an emotional tie because the wards were theirs.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Whatever they say that, they're still that person who they are.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: May sometimes say that they would the scammers would say like, actually,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I was trying to scam you, but over this course
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: of time, I actually fell in love with you. Oh
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: my gosh. I twist the narrative a little bit. Whether
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: it's true or not, I can't tell you the heart
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: of the scammer, but you know, I'm thinking that it's
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: just they got to find out so they have to
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: switch gears, you know, they have to switch gears and
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: do that sort of thing, so the person remains in
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: love with them and vulnerable, and then all of their
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: economic liability is gone. So they become part of these scammers.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And they're even more vulnerable from a legal perspective because
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: they're in the US in most cases and you know,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: governed by the laws there, and so they're the ones
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: who are doing the transactions. They're the ones who are
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: you know, sending money to these countries and so on.
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: They're the ones that could potentially be prosecuted if it
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: came to that, because absolutely, as we see more and more,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: especially with international scammers, there's like this huge question of jurisdiction.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: And I mean there's a lot of problems with getting
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: any kind of justice, but if someone's in another country
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: like the US, local enforcement's not going to do anything
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I did a keynote presentation about these deep fake
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: scams at the organization for all of the police chiefs
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: in the entire country and basically, at some point I said,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: what are you going to do about this? And it
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: was an absolute silence, like from police chiefs who you
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: would think that Cross Canada would have some sense of
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: what they can do about it. But it was just like,
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: we can't do anything about this, Like there's too many
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: of these problems. It's outside of our jurisdiction. We have
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: no teeth elsewhere, we can't do much about it. I mean,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: they can deal with some of the local ones. But
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: as I mentioned just before, these aren't the people that
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: are probably the ones that should be prosecuted to the
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: extent of the law. They're not the ones that initiated
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: these things. They're not the ones that control the transactions
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: or benefit from the transactions. They're victims who have been
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: re victimized in many ways. Yeah.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like I wonder if maybe not that this
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: is a solution, but just educating people who are in
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: more vulnerable populations falling for things like this, like maybe
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: you know, elderly people or whoever their main sort of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: target is, and I don't know exactly how you reach them,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: but just getting the word out.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: See that's a good point, Like this is how they
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: one of the scammeras mentioned, this is how they found
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: their victims. They look for in particular cases, they look
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: for highly religious individuals who were widowed and of a
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: certain age, And back then it was much easier to
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: find those people on Facebook, Like you can pull up
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: a victim list very quickly if you're looking for keywords
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: that for like widowed or widow er, god fearing, that
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: sort of thing, and those are that particular perspective, and
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: so the widowed widower. You know, these are women who
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: are middle aged or older or elderly who have never
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: done online dating before. And it was amazing how many
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: times I heard from a victim who said, the only
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: reason I started finding these people online is because I
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: was with my husband my entire life. I never dated online.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: And then my daughter said, go get out there and
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: you can find someone.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: So on.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: And that's the worst advice you can give to your
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: elderly parent who hasn't had any perception of what the
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: internet is or Internet scammers and so on, Like it's
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: not going to be a good ride for them. There's
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: not a lot of people out there that are going
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: to be sort of available in the pool that you want. Yeah, right,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: So I would not recommend it to anyone. So in
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: many ways, daughters implicating and not daughters in all cases,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: but you know, whoever encouraged people to get online, but
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: it was even things like it wasn't just dating sites,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: like there was all sorts of dating sites implicated, like
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: you know, Christian Mingle and e Harmony and all of
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: those sites, but it was things like Words with Friends.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember that, yeah, yeah, with
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: that one was like quoted a number of times where
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: someone just became your Words with Friends partner and you
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: basically played with them long enough and you gained a
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: relationship over there. So it was like, Wow, what a
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: demographic word. It's for friends. It's not like young hipteen
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: for the most part, right right, Well.
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: This is the big question because I think that educating
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: people is super important. I mean, I think talking about
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: scam's and I care about that a lot. We've talked
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: about it, we continue to talk about it on our
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: podcast because it's just happening more and more and more,
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: and so educating is certainly important, and spreading the news
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: that this is happening, so like, be careful. But the
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: advancement is happening so quickly. It's like there's a gap
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: between how quickly these scams are progressing and evolving and
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: how slowly we are to respond. I'm thinking about even Facebook,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: you know, as an example, and how much we started
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: to see this happening of people being scammed on Facebook,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: only because it was like one of the first sort
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: of social media sites where people got on and we're
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: sharing tons of photos and it was used by such
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: a wide portion of the population as opposed to smaller
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: social media things. Then it just started happening, and it
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: was such a long period of time realistically until Facebook
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: responded and only recently has really cracked down on this.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: But then, as you have explained, it just diverts the
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: scammers to a different platform and a new platform and
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: apps like a game that you play on your phone,
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: or dating apps, and now we have AI. So you know,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: it's something that I'm curious. I imagine you probably think
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: about a lot as a professor and someone who talks
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: about social media and technology, about like what needs to happen.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you think that policy like from
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: a governmental level would work, or if tech companies need
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: to start changing, But it sort of feels like we're
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: just not responding quickly enough.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: I agree, I am. I think there's some regulation that
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: could be done. I mean, I think the governments are
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: really reluctant to put any regulation on social media companies
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: or we'd have a much more pleasant ways to go.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: There's particular articles around online safety that puts away the
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: liability of social media companies, like anything the users do,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: it's not the platform's fault. That's a big issue for sure.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: But I think, you know, you were speaking earlier about
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: educating people, and I do think that's the biggest thing,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: is sort of having much broader and much you know,
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: much more uniform and universal education on some of these scams.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Like yesterday, I heard from the bank that I bank
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: with and they're putting out information around deep Fix, and
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: I think that's great and to be worried about deep
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: Fix and that sort of thing, But like where were
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: you five years ago when it started or ten years
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: ago when it started, And all of a sudden, it's
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: becoming a big issue because banks are become let implicated
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: and it's affecting their bottom line because you're seeing examples
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: of people pretending to be whoever a banker on the
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: other end, and they're getting your bank information. So people
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: don't get a sense of that. But like just like
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: two days ago or three days ago, like Sora too,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: you know, based on when we're recording this podcast. Sora Too,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: which is the video engine from open Ai, came up
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: with a cameo feature, so you can have Sam Altman
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: and create a video of him saying whatever, and that
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: could be saying something like, you know, like send me
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: money or you know, I'm going public with OpenAI and
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: you know, if you want to be in an early investor, like,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: you can do that with that app right now, like
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: if you have access to it. It's incredibly realistic. Google's
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: bo three has been around for a while and although
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: they say that you can't create celebrities, it doesn't have
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: to be celebrities. You can create really convincing videos saying
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: whatever creating person is saying anything you want. So you
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: can do this live. You can do this and create
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: videos of this. The genie is out of the bottle,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: like it's we're at the point where the technology is
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: just so incredibly convincing and it's only getting better every
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: single day. If you're not good at Facebook, it doesn't matter.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: You can use Google's Gemini today just to get into
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: a bunch of tools just to say I want a
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: person that looks like this holding this with the science
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: saying this, and you know, it's really really simple to
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: do that within seconds. So you don't have to know photoshop.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: You don't have to have technical skills to create fake
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: looking things. You just have to speak in natural language.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Like it's not about coding anymore. It's natural language. If
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: you can speak in terms of what you want, you
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: can have what you want. And it's scary, Like it's
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: really scary. And then I can project it over a webcam.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: I can take someone's over face of someone's face over
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: a webcam. I can have this entire conversation with you
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: just using someone else's space. Like, so you know, the
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: education is long, do regulations not can happen as quickly
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: as we'd want it to happen, and a lot of
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: people are going to get burned.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I think recently in the news there was a story
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: about a woman who unfortunately was scammed into thinking that
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: she was dating Brad Pitt and they were like these
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: kind of awful photoshop pictures of him. But there's also
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: this side of it that is like the non celebrity
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: of it all makes it that much more believable. Yeah,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and deep fakes are I mean, there's so much more
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: common now even than they were. It's like I'll be
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: on Instagram and I'll be scrolling through the ads and
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: I'll see a deep fake of Oprah promoting something. I'm like,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: there's no way Oprah's behind this.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Right, I've got a government or I forget his name
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: that There's a lot of people in that space, you know,
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: who are Joe Rogan's or whatever else. You have prominent
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: podcasters that are saying by these vitamins or whatever else,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: and it sent you to a link that's something that's
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: totally you know, different, and you know things that are
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: plausible for these particular influencers. Yeah, you can develop that,
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: but it can be again anyone. So I can just
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: I can create a fake profile on something like Tinder.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: I can fake my my location. So I'm and it's
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: happened in some cases, like I've had people that I
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: know through social connections and they say, oh, by the way,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: you just showed up on Tinder in North Carolina or
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: I know some problem some state or something like that,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: and they kind of laugh. And so they notice me
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: and they know who I am, just because I have
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: a fairly large online profile and so at least they know.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: But from that point, if I connect with someone, you know,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: through that app or or whoever, you create the most
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: handsome or beautiful person just to you know, try to
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: get you know, your swipe left or right. I don't
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: even don't ever use the app one of those two,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: you know, and then connect with someone. Then of course
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: from that face you can use and create video, you
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: can connect online. So it can be incredibly incredibly convinced things.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: So again, really tough to discern truth from I think
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: big today.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, on this note, just the difficulty of telling something
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: that's real from something that's not. I don't know, it's
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: like I think, because it's getting so much harder to
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: decipher that. Yeah, Like a lot of people will be tricked.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: So it's like, what do you do if you're trying
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: to date on tender you meet someone and it looks
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: very convincing. I guess you just have to like see
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: people in person. Like I feel like that's is that
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: like literally the only answer.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Basically, I think. I mean, there's there's there's things that
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: social media companies could do to make those things better,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: but they kind of interrupt the whole privacy piece too.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Like I think it's great to be able to have
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: like a verified profile, like something that on the web
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: that says like these things me and this kind of
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: these profiles are connected to me, and I think social
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: media companies can do that, but at the same time,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: people are targeted in that way. So like there's something
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: around anonymity as much as free speech is happening in
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: different ways, and look at different ways in the US
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: right now, and it's a bit and turmoil. There's a
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: need for many people that they're incredibly vulnerable, to be
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: able to speak anonymously. And so when you apply, you know,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: if you apply a solution for dating and deep face
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: and that sort of thing that is much more like
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: we need to verify profiles, you might take away from
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: some other problem on the web where people need anonymity.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: So I kind of understand recognize that tension that you know,
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: if we fix one problem, we're going to you know,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: make something really much more difficult for other people as well.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: And so yeah, I think you're right, Like I think,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: you know, meeting someone face to face, that that's going
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: to be an important piece of that. But some people,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: you know, they recognize that you're not going to be
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: able to meet face to face. Like I remember, you know,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: back in my day, like falling in love with someone
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: over the phone, Like the phone was enough. I didn't
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: have to see this person. You spend hours and hours
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: talking to someone, charging up a tremendous long distance bill
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: right back in the day. And like any medium where
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: you can connect to someone, you're going to you have
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: the potential to fall in love. And there are people
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: who have long distance relationships that are valid and are
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: beautiful and have all those things. But we have to
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: be able to be able to do that too. So
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: there's still a number of people who are going to
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: be vulnerable, who are sort of getting into those relationships
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: where it's just not feasible to find your life partner
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: or your soulmate or whatever it might be through a
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: very early initial pace to pace interaction. Right. So, I
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: think people are finding each other much more globally, and
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: you know, not necessarily from their jurisdiction. We're we're not
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: in the generation where you're going to marry the person
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: who you met in kindergarten, right. Yeah.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: It's like the beautiful part of the Internet and early
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Internet where it opened up and it was like, wow,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: I can meet people outside of my town, my specific area.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, probably most people that are together these days
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: met online, Like I wouldn't be with my partner if
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: it weren't for online dating.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: I met my husband on Match before there was an app,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Like we were both twenty four, and I would have
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: never met him.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: He lived in Westwood.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it, right, Like I think and like saying
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: it's the beautiful part of web. That is the beautiful
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: part of the Web, and like to deny that from
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: others just because, like we have to. We're getting to
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: the point where it's so the web has become so
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: difficult to trust, Like I think it just takes a
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: big part of it, Like the web is us. It's
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: like it's beauty, It's I often use the hashtags shiny,
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: happy Internet. It's like it's just that there are some
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: things that we see online, especially in the early web,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: that were just beautiful, you know, stories of people connecting
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: and so on, and so it's really tarnished that aspect
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: of it, and I think it really take away your
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: dating pool and your possibilities for happiness and you know, companionship.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I'm curious. I guess it's changing gears a little bit,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: but I'm curious. When was the last time you received
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: a message from someone who believed that you were someone else.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: You know, it's been a couple of months, and this
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: is really rare, so like, and it's just probably this
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: past year, I've maybe received seven or eight, I think,
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: so it's been slowed down a lot tremendously, and I
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: don't see as many reports. Like there's a scam site
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: that I used to check all the time, and I
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: haven't seen many pop up there anymore. So, like I
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: was wondering for the longest time, like why, Like I'm not,
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: like I'm not a web celebrity in a big sense,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: but I'm out there enough that people can recognize, like
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: they can do a quick Google search and verify who
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I am. I was always wondering, like why they were
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: using my photos at all when they could use someone that
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: would be much less No, and I guess much easier
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: to find. So on, Like I know this is happening
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: to me, but I think there's a lot of people
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: who don't know that it's happened to them. So, like
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: going back earlier to that advice where you know, people
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: who could lock things up if someone maybe maybe their
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Facebook profile was just public for just a little while
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: then they lock things up. Those people's photos might be being used,
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: and those people have no idea that their photos are
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: being used. And I guess part of for me to understand,
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: like for me to have known this in the first place,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: it's kind of a double edged swort to have it open.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: I guess people are able to find me and tell
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: me about this, But some people who've been compromised in
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: a very small way, or there's been one of the
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: websites hacked, for instance, and then there's a website hackings
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: that happen all the time. You know, if you get
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: your photos get compromised, you may not know this is
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: happening to you. But I really do think that AI
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: has really been the change here, Like if I was
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: a scammer, I wouldn't be using anyone's photos. Like that's
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: kind of the silliest way to do these things. You're
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: going to get caught.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: I have another question actually about people reaching out to you,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: which is, even though you know now you have like
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: a way to show them pretty quickly. Here's what has
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: happened in instances where people have given up a lot
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: of money or lost something to these scammers. Has anyone
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: ever then asked you for their money back.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately not or fortunately not. I guess I don't know
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: how to look at that. M So at that point,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: like the most that's ever come up from those circumstances
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: that they're not except for that the Russian man, I
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: think he's the only one that's after me. I've never
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: been asked for the money back, but I have been
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: sort of like, so are you open to a relationship
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: or your single that sort of thing like. And that's
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: one of the sad things I see on a lot
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: of this is I'll even say I'm sorry that he
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: lost his money, and the common response from many of
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: these victims is like the money, like, I'll deal with it,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: I'll live with it. What I can't live with is
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: my broken heart. Like it's really like these people have
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: been drawn into this thing and they don't care about
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: the money at that time. Of course they care about it,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: but the betrayal is not about money. The betrayal is
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: about like, I've spent months or even years in these
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: cases where I've given you not just money, but I've
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: given you my heart. I've given you my some of
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: the best years of my life, you know, some of
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: the dating years that you know that the opportunities that
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: I've lost maybe to be in a relationship with someone
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: else heartbreaking. So that's what they've lost. You can't You know,
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: you can find money at some point, but you're not
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: going to be able to take those years back right in.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: The betrayal of the trust and her break is hard.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: I was wondering if anyone had ever asked you as
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: a follow up to that, to corroborate their story, if
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: they filed a police report or anything like that.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: No, not that I know of. In one case, sort
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: of the opposite, I've had one person who's been well.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: She stopped over the last year, although I think in
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: the last year semi one, but probably since about twenty fifteen.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: There's this one person in the US that's been really convinced.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: I think I think she's particularly vulnerable. I don't think
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: she's her her mental health is very well, or she's
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: not doing very well from that perspective. She sent me
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: all sorts of images, and she sent me lots of
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: communication where I have to convince her. I think I'm
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: convincing her that I'm not in a relationship with her,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: and then she'll send me something else like that she's
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: been in recontact with they had their version of me,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: and then she believes she's in contact with me, and
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: she thinks I'm just kind of going back and she's
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: confused and so on. She sent me like really explicit
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: pictures and so on and stuff that's gross in the
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: sense that it's like she talks about my children like
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: she knows them and that she's gonna be with them.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: And at some point, like she harassed me to the
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: point where I had to call the police on her,
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: and just like I sort of identified where she lived,
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: I called the local police, and it was interesting that
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: this is like a small town in in a state somewhere,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: and the police knew who she was as soon as
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: I mentioned who it was and go, oh, so, like
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: there's some story there, and they realized that she will
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: maybe mentally unwell all And again that's sort of like
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: a victim who's been been compromising in a particular way
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: and being really leveraging that way. So I feel really
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: bad for this person. But this is one person who
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: for the longest time she was posting like she's had
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: websites where she's like the future doctor Corros and like
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: posts that onto my and has lots of multiple profiles,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: and she posts that onto my socials as well, Like
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: she finds a new profile and posts it on on
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: some of my profiles, which is just you know, for
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: people who don't know me, like I always there's a
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: lot of people that know me pretty well and understand
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: this is going on. For the person who's you know,
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: doesn't know me well and who's new to me, like
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: seeing that sort of stuff. Again, I don't like taking
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: those hits on my reputation.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: That's understandable for sure. Yeah, yikes. Yeah, sad, sad all around,
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: but you got to do it.
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: And I feel bad for this person and I hope
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: she gets the help speeds. But she's really really being victimized.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, acknowledging that the betrayal in the heartbreak is where
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: you see these victims hurting the most. I'm curious just
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: to get a sense of the scope here, if you
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: have any sort of ballpark estimate of how much money
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: these scammers have taken from people just using your persona.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to know that for sure, but what's
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: been estimated to me, like a way I've seen houses
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: in some cases figures of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: For some reason, I see certain countries victimize more, so
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: you'll see like it'll be reported non US dollars. So
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: I get a lot of people from Brazil that tend
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: to be victims. For instance, South America seems to be
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: very big, a lot of southern states, some places in Europe,
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: for instance. But what I can ascertain from what they've said,
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: just the numbers that they've shared, there have been well
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: over like well over a million dollars. And that's just
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: from a few cases. Not everyone implicates. Like I have
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: a I don't know one that I mentioned that's sort
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: of this long term person that I've had to call
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: the police on. She sent me like photos of like
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: gift cards, like's probably one hundred gift cards, and I
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: don't know what the values are on allos. And that's
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: often a way that they'll get money, so I don't
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: know what that's worth. But this is a person that
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: doesn't have a lot of money, but every time she
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: has money, she sends gift cards. So I have all
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: of these images of gift cards that have been scratched
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: and really real to other people. So at least a
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: million dollars from what's been declared to me, I suspect
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: that's probably only about five percent of what I'm probably seeing,
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: So I'm assuming there's quite a bit more. Wow, and
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: I kind of darify any of that for sure.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean just it's telling just from what
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: people have shared with you. And yeah, I mean it's
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: an incredible loss for anyone who found themselves in a
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: situation where they believed that someone loved them. I mean,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: if you're dating someone and you are that deep into it,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you've told people in your life about them too,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: and so it's probably not even a secret in their world,
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: and then they have to reconcile. Actually I got scammed.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: There's so much even though there shouldn't be shame and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: embarrassment around it, because it could truly happen to anyone,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: there is and that is just it is heartbn ching.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: Well, and that's one of the tactics that these scammers
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: do is they try to get you away from their
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: friends because often they can set the alarm and that
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: sort of thing. So they will try to isolate you,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: like they'll say things like our love people wouldn't understand it,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: and you know, because it's an online thing. I think
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: you have to recognize that this is not just the
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: only uneducated or vulnerable people. I've had very well educated
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: professors and professionals who have said, I'm incredibly embarrassed by it,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: like I fail for this. And they just happen to
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: be of that certain demographic that they're vulnerable emotionally, not
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: necessarily from you know, from a lack of lack of understanding.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: They just got kind of caught up with these things
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: and they thought it was true. And so this happens everyone.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: And I guess I mean lack of general education. They
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: may not have known a lot about scams, but you know,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: well educated in other respects, intelligence and so on. This
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: can happen to anyone.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, Hannah and I've been covering different
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: instances of fraud for so long now, and it is
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: certainly not determined by someone's intelligence or level of education.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: The people who do this, who scam people, are just
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: very good at it.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: They're very good and the scripts they share, it's not
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: only the photos they share, they share scripts, scenarios. They
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: are incredibly organized in terms of what they need to do,
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Like this is just so well done. They know psychology
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: better than most psychology grads will understand in terms of
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: how they can actually dominate, leverage human psychology and really
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: you know, get people to do what they want. Like
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: this is an incredible persuasion, and this is done because
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: of so much repetition. They're doing this over and over again.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: They're successful. They're sharing it with friends or their their colleagues,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: I guess, And yeah, I mean at that point, I mean,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: we are beings who are incredibly vulnerable from a psychological perspective,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: from an emotional perspective. And you see this in politics.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: You see this in government, politicians and so on. People
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: can be made vulnerable and that can be leveraged for
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: your advantage in whatever way you might want to do that.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: And so yeah, yeah, so.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Be careful out there.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, send any any money or a picture of me,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: just just it's not me. Well, you're a student who
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: called out our podcast. She has great taste.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: I think she does. Yeah. Sure.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: Plus plus, thank you so much for joining us, Alec
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: and talking us through all of this. It's been really
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: interesting and informative.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: It's been great. It's nice to be able to voice
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: the us out and just say the things that, you know,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: it kind of helps me put things together as well
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: in my mind and reform this. And so I really recognize,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: you know, the power of these questions and for you
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: to be able to share this to a wider audience,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: I think it's great. I really appreciate your desire to
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: do that and for being a guest today.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks for taking the time. So, Hannah, after our off
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: record episode, which is number one twenty two for anyone
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: who wants to go back and listen that hasn't after
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: that episode released, you heard from Alec.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he listened to the podcast and reached out to
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: me and was like, thanks for spreading the word. And
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: then because there weren't any recent articles about him, I
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: think the last one that I had found was like
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: from twenty twenty. It was curious to talk to him
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: about if it was still happening, especially with the use
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: of AI now, like things have just changed so much
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: in the last five years. So I was really excited
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: that he agreed to come on the show and like
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: talk to us more about his story. In the episode,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: I think you asked him, you know, do you know
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: how much money was taken overall by this scammer or
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: group of scammers using his photo. Yeah, I think he
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: estimated like a million dollars or something.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: He hastimated a million dollars.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So then he actually emailed me and followed up
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: after the interview. You know, he said, after reviewing some
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: of the information and considering my previous messages, I realized
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: that I likely underestimated the total amount involved. There are
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: people that reached out to him said that they had
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: to like foreclose their house, who had given you know,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: a lot of their savings to different scammers. Like people
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: lost a lot of money, and he thinks, he said,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: he can't verify this, but he believes that it would
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: be more like multiple millions, probably between three and ten million. Wow,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: that he would estimate as he just pieced together their
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: messages he's gotten from people. So this is like a
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: massive scam being orchestrated with his face, with his face
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: and in other instances, like more pieces of his identity
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: than just that. So this estimate he's given us is
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: still only based on the people who have managed to
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: find him and share their story. Yes, and not all
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: of the people that we know haven't. Yeah, that's a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: good point. So it could be much more than that.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: So much more. Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: great that he has chosen to face this head on
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: when he could easily not respond to these messages. This
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with him, yeah, other than that
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: someone stole his photo, but he takes the time, and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: he has taken the time to like, here's the story,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: so that he can relay that to someone who's going
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: through it and hopefully stop them from giving more money
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: to these people.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It was interesting though to hear him talk about
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: these type of scams and how they run like well
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: oiled machines. Yeah, and how usually it's not just like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: one person doing this, it's someone who's connected to an
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: organization that is scamming people, and that there could be
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of factors at play, like people could be
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: coerced to be part of this, you know, scammer organization.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: And I feel like we see more and more of
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: that actually happening. Yeah.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: So I actually listened to an episode of Criminal. It
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: was titled The Compound, and it was about a woman
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: who thought she had gotten a new administrative role. This
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: is in another country outside of the US, and she
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: was given all these directions she was relocating for this job,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: and she gets there and realizes that she's basically held
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: captive and being forced to operate as part of this
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: organized crime unit scamming people everything from romance scams to
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: other types of fraud, and essentially a prisoner and they
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: have to meet these quotas. And she never wanted to
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: do this, she never wanted to be there. It's called
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: the Compound. It's on the Criminal Feed, and it was
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: just a really informative episode.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, we love Criminal a great show. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: you know. Okay, So I think that is something that
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: is happening so often, and like when you get a
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: call or whatever from a scammer, that it's probably not
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: just a person randomly doing this. They're probably involved in
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: some sort of scheme or organization. Maybe not always, but
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: probably about a year ago, I got a call and look,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: I think I pretty quickly like realized I think this
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: is a scam, but of course I was sort of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: interested to see where it went. So this guy calls
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: me and he's like, he says, his name is Lieutenant
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: Justin Bruce.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like someone we would have reached
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: out to at some point.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: Really, and he's like, you know, Basically the whole thing
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: he's trying to say is you didn't show up for
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: jury duty. It's one of these scams, and you know,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: now there's a fine. He gives me this reference number
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: FTA one one two nine dash, like you know what,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: so official, and I'm like, where am I supposed to
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: put this reference number in? You know? And so I
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: sort of started googling and quickly realized, like, this is
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: for sure a scam. He's trying to get me to
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: pay five hundred dollars supposed to thirty two dollars service
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: fee so that you're not in contempt of court. And
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: eventually I just was like, well, I know this is
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: a scam. And I was surprised because he was like,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: oh you do, And I was like, yeah, I actually
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: work in podcasting and true crime and I do a
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: lot of research about scams, and so I'm pretty familiar
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: that this is a scam. And he was like, oh wow, yeah.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: So then he just starts talking to me. He says
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: he's been in prison in Georgia for seven years, oh
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: my gosh, and he he was going to get out
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: in like six months or something. So he just started
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: to ask him, like what is the scam, you know, like,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: do you make money on this? To people? And he's
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: like yeah, you know, and most people like don't fall
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: for it, but sometimes we do get people who are
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: giving money. And he said that he worked for basically
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: a gang like in prison, and that he had connected
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: with them in order to be safe and survive in prison,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: and part of his role was that he kept all
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: the cell phones that they used in his cell and
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: that he had to do a certain amount of calls,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: and that there was someone in the group who would
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: come up with these schemes. There was multiple of them,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: you know, This Lieutenant Justin Bruce was one of these.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: So they come up with a reference number and all
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: of this stuff to try to make it seem real.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Like a lieutenant of what sir, Yeah, what.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: Are we talking about? But I don't know. It's interesting
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: because he was like he kind of was looking at
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: like a job that he had and that he was
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: able to survive this way, and he's like, I don't
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: feel good about it, but it's not like I have
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: other ways of making money in here and I've been
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: able to survive.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Anyway, so I sort of wanted to interview him, but
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: then he started to get like sort of creepy and flirty,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, no, we're going to have
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: to hang up and never talk to you again. But
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: I do wish him the best, and I thought I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: was interesting to hear that. Wow, like these scams are
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: even coming out of prisons.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, similar to this episode I was talking about
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: with on the Criminal Feeds. He doesn't want to be
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: doing this. He feels like he has no choice, and
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: maybe he doesn't. I've never been in that situation, but
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: it's terrible because a lot of the people that fall
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: for scams are elderly. Maybe they're alone and they don't
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: know any better. There's no one they can ask, or
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: they can't hop on Google and see yeah and yeah.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: One of those people was almost my grandpa, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: and so I called him Poppy. He has since passed away,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: but my whole life was just so close to Poppy.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: He was just the best. I love that.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And we talked all the time. And when I
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: actually was going through my archives to pull up this
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: letter about the scam I'm going to tell you about,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: I showed you on zoom. It was so thick. It
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: was like five inches thick of just letters from him.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: He was the best, and I talked to him all
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: about like my life, you know, we just talked about everything.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: And I had moved to Los Angeles a few years
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: before this happened, so he knew I was like in
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: this big city, and I think he worried a little bit.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so we'd been talking all the time, and
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: then in October I got a letter from him, which
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: usually was just like a silly old family photo with
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: the story and socks from Costco, like that's usually what
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: he said. But this letter, so I got it, and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I'll read it because this is all the context I
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: had when I received it.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: Was just a letter.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, Patia, can't get over our recent phone talk. You
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: only had one glass of wine. Don't want to call
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: your father. You were vague on the rules and of bonds.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: I didn't not call your father because you made me
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: promise not to for me, this doesn't add up. You
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: surely sound poorly, so very sorry, so sorry, Poppy.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's heartbreaking. Yeah, heartbreaking.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: And he was in his eighties and so I call
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: him when I get this, and I'm like, what is
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: this letter? I said, I don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: I had no idea about the scam at this point,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: I was not familiar. And he said that he had
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: gotten a call from me, or who he thought was me,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: saying that I was in jail on the East Coast
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: and that I had been drinking and driving and been
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: pulled over and I needed him to bail me up,
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: and I didn't want my parents to know. And he's
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: not like a tech savvy person. He didn't know how
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: to get online and give money. So thankfully he didn't
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: end up giving them any money.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: That's good. But he was.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Distraught emotionally because for the week that passed between us
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: talking and me getting this letter, he thought that I
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: was in jail.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: Why didn't they try calling you?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, and it's possible that he did,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: and I just, for whatever reason, hadn't called him back yet. Okay,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: But if I had to guess, he didn't call because
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: he just thought he would hear from me.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: When I got out.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because he really believed it. Yeah, And he didn't
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: know how to FaceTime or anything. So all of our
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: communication was just letters and phone calls because he lived
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: in Naples, Florida and I was in Los Angeles. Yeah,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I called him and I said, I haven't
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: been traveling. I've been here the whole time, and I
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't drinking and driving, and I've never been arrested or
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: to jail for anything. And he was like, I I think,
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: hesitant to believe me.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: And so then I'm getting online and I'm like, oh, scam,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: this is scam.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: And so then I told him. I was like, Poppy, like,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: you can always call my parents, Like, if you ever
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: think I'm in trouble, you can always call my parents.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Those are the kind of parents I have, and you
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: don't have to keep any secrets from them. I think
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: that made him feel like, oh, okay, you probably this
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: was probably not real. And then I got another little letter.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: It said, I'll never get over thinking you were in
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: jail in Boston, Poppy. I mean, it's so sad.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: So luckily he didn't give any money, but he was
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: very upset because he thought I was just sitting in
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: some jail cell in a duy charge.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: That's heartbreaking, heart breaking. I'm glad that he believed you
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: and came around to understand that I know it's horrible.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: I know, I'm like, Oh, what a sweet grandpa. He
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: had my back, he kept my secret. Not that I
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: think he should have, but he did really well.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean it's you know, these scams have
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: gone more elaborate over time, but it could really happen
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to anybody. And I know we say that all the time,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: but it's true. And something Alec talked about also is
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: like the shame and embarrassment that people feel, and it's
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: just really sad. And I think it's awesome that Alex
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: out there talking about it.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: I do too.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: I also am like, I'm really hoping that there's some
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: sort of protections that happen with AI because if that
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: had happened, the same thing with your grandpa had happened,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: And like, I don't know a few years even though
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: maybe now like someone could use an AI version of
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: your voice. Yeah, And then it's like, how is anyone
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: supposed to know if it's real or not?
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Oh totally or like the deep fakes that are coming out.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, like we post our faces on social media,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: it's not that hard to grab a picture of almost
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: anyone in these days. I watched this YouTube channel called
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: black Tail Studio. It's this guy in Oregon who makes
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: these like real cool epoxy tables. Okay, okay, so he
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: just moved to this like ranch and Oregon and mostly
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: my husband likes the tables.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: They're cool.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: I'm just waiting for him to get a horse. This
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: is my Like, I'm just like, please get a horse,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Please get a horse. So but anyway, I was watching
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: and he actually had someone pretend to be him and
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: sell someone at a table. And these tables are really expensive,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: not that they're not worth it.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: Wait it wasn't him, someone pretended to be him. Yeah,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: and he was exposing that.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: Right, and he was exposing it.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: The person that they were scamming was sent a video
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: of him talking to her, but it was a deep fake.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: And this is like, it's a successful YouTube channel, but
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: it's not like this guy can't walk down the street
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: right right, right, and someone's making a deep fake of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: him selling this table. Yeah, and he actually found the
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: person who had been scammed and made her a table,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: which is so Sweet's nice?
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: Sorry, yeah, I mean, you know, in our conversation with Alec,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: it was like very focused on education, which I think
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: is probably like the best thing that we can be
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: in control of. Right, as we keep talking about this,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: hopefully people will be aware of these scams. But I
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: also just like really feel like there's going to have
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: to be some kind of regulation at some point.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: There has to be more we can do to protect people.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, even the fact that on your cell phone
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: now it's like potential spam. I'm not answering, and I
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: think that's so helpful. I like that it pops up
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, what an interesting conversation with Alec. I'm
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: so glad he joined us.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for listening.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: We'll talk to you next week.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: If you have a story for us, we would love
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: at the Knife podcast or a Blue Sky at the
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: Knife Podcast.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: by me Hannah Smith and me paytia Et.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: is Christina Chamberlain. Music is by Birds in the Airport.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: Artwork by Vanessa Lilac Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.