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- 🎭 Faces for Sale: China's Deepfake Marketplace Is Scaling Up 💰
🎭 Faces for Sale: China's Deepfake Marketplace Is Scaling Up 💰
Frank McKenna
June 25, 2024
Hi Friends 👋 ,
It was a rough week for the 15,000 car dealers (about 30% of all dealers in the US) impacted by two separate CDK breaches. Hackers are demanding over $50 million, and CDK will likely pay them a massive sum.
Dealers had to use sticky notes and spreadsheets to conduct business as Russian hackers took control of the platform. These hackers are showing us they have the muscle to cripple an industry representing 3.5% of our total GDP in the US.
We are in a real crisis, with hundreds of companies breached on Snowflake last week, 15,000 dealers impacted this week, and a shocking 33 Terabytes of Data stolen from the Federal Reserve yesterday. Things are on fire at the moment 🔥
White Flag - 404Media thinks Facebook has given up the fight against fraud, scams, disinformation, extortion, and deepfakes and is dismantling its efforts to control it. They speculate that it's just not worth the cost.
Soaring Chargebacks - The Wall Street Journal reports that friendly fraud is soaring, and US chargebacks will hit a record $26 billion by 2026. Reversing credit card charges has never been easier or more absurd.
Shady Scraping - Multiple large publishers claim that AI companies are stealing data from their websites using shady techniques to train their AI models. In the race for money, AI companies are engaging in unethical activity.
AI Scam ChatBot— A website called Rescam was launched. It allows victims to send the email address of a scammer who defrauded them to an artificial intelligence engine, which engages the scammers in an endless, time-wasting chat.
Deepfake Deception - A Shanghai-based newspaper went undercover at a deepfake factory and discovered that many American’s likenesses were being used to create deepfakes halfway across the world. These are not celebrities but regular everyday folks. Are you a victim of this?
Bad Partner - An Australian woman faked the death of her partner and filed an insurance claim, receiving a payout of close to half a million dollars. Her own bank flagged the incoming insurance payout and her fraud came tumbling down.
Lexis Nexis Report - Lexis Nexis has a link for you to download their report on Synthetic Identity called “Hidden in Plain Sight”. The report was featured in the “Millions of Frankensteins” post last week providing additional details.
North Korea Takedown—A vigilante hacker named Alejandro Caceres reveals how he systematically tore offline every publicly visible website in North Korea as retribution for their spy campaign against them. He thinks the US should begin using his technique against international hackers and ransomware extortionists.
Next AI Threat? According to the SCMP, the next big national security threat might be AI Sex Robots from China, which might blur the lines between reality and fiction, influencing people to make bad decisions they would not otherwise make.
Speed Bump - Charlie, a Fintech for elderly people, introduces a novel program to stop scams called SpeedBump, which will intervene and pause payments when they suspect a scam.
Facebook Is Totally Cool With Fraud University 👍️
Imagine a university you could go to learn how to commit fraud from criminals. Now, imagine that one of the largest and richest companies in the world hosted that program.
You don’t have to imagine it because it exists. Fraud University is a popular Facebook group boasting over 7,000 members. Facebook doesn’t seem bothered by it; in fact, when a friend of mine tried to report the group, Facebook said it didn’t go against the guidelines.
Read why Facebook is totally cool with Fraud University. 😎
ERC Sauce Still Hitting – IRS Reports 90% Fraud Rate
Months after the IRS stopped processing applications for the ERC (Employee Retention Tax Credit) program, it is still inundated with fraudulent applications.
Fraudsters are pounding the agency with 17,000 new applications a week. The IRS says the program has a 90% fraud rate. From making up fake businesses, to inflating employee accounts, the nightmare for the agency seems never-ending.
For Sale - Thousands Of AI Deepfake Faces For Scamming
Can you be deepfaked? The answer may be yes because deepfakes are only getting better and better each day.
Gary Warner of Dark Tower gave me a glimpse into the dark world of AI deepfakes being sold freely on Telegram.
The Telegram site, which is completely in Chinese, sells thousands of real-time AI faces that can be used to fool victims into believing catfishing scammers are the real deal.
Watch this video, which shows how convincing these deepfakes can be, particularly to victims of romance scams and Pig Butchering, where they want to believe the best in their online partners, no matter how fake they may be.
Somebody Cloned Me In China Thousands Of Times
A month after Olga Loiek started her YouTube channel, she noticed thousands of deepfake videos using her image. She was stunned to discover that she appeared to speak fluent Mandarin in many of them.
Find out how deepfakes are exploding online in sinister ways.
Check Frauds Aha Moment 💡 - Intelligent Text Alerts to Customers.
Check fraud is running rampant across the US with no end in sight.
But Uri Rivner and RefineIntelligence think intelligent text alerts that ask for customers directly if the check is valid or not before the bank pays them might be a big part of the equation.
And why not? It worked wonders for card issuers years ago when credit card fraud analysts were overwhelmed by manually calling customers and making independent (and often wrong) decisions on when to block cards. Adeptra turned out to be a major turning point.
The service works with any fraud solution a bank has, like Mitek’s Check Fraud Defender, which reports phenomenal success with text messaging when combined with the consortium approach and accurate flagging of which checks to target.
China Targets US With Hacking Contest
China's spy agencies are using talent competitions to recruit young hackers for cyberattacks on the US.
China is weaponizing the brains of its young and are forced to compete in government-sanctioned domestic events, giving spy agencies a pipeline of knowledge and manpower that can be exploited for use against the U.S. and its allies.
Scammers Used “Asset Verification” Ploy To Steal $33 Million From Elderly Lady.
An elderly woman in Hong Kong received a call from fraudsters posing as Chinese officials, accusing her of money laundering.
Police reported this week that what followed was the next largest phone scam in Hong Kong history. To "prove innocence," she set up six bank accounts, transferred HK$258 million, and shared details via an app. Over 23 months, scammers drained the accounts as they coerced her into "verifying her assets” and truthfulness.
Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store Fraud Goes Bad Fast
In a Florida fiasco, two in-laws got more than they bargained for when they tried to score hot water heaters at ice-cold half-off prices at Lowes.
Kaycee Gordon was told by her brother-in-law, Arturo, to pick up a hot water heater from the store. Little did she know Arturo was getting her involved as an unwitting credit card fraud mule.
Needless to say, the ham-handed caper went bad quick when astute Lowes investigators picked up that it was a stolen credit card scheme. Thanksgiving dinners are going to be super awkward this year 🦃
This Smiling Psychopath PickleBall Scammer Stole $50 Million.
Who would have thought Pickleball would be subject to fraud? As we know, fraud follows rapid growth, and no sport is growing as fast as it is.
Read how this massive scammer Rodney 'Rocket' Grubbs, conned 50 of his friends out of millions with his investment scam.
Thanks for catching up on all the trends and stories this week. Happy Fraud Hunting, everyone!