Greetings from FrankonFraud,

It's been a bit of a crazy week in AI. Meta released a powerful new AI into the wild—free for anyone (including scammers) to download and use however they see fit. And HeyGen released a crazy new AI Bot that will deepfake the heck out of victims.

Let’s check out the top stories this week!

• CyberStart Scandal Brewing - In what is shaping up to be a major scandal, Gili Ra’anan (the biggest name in cybersecurity startups) is accused of compensating CISOs to implement his products and using other tactics to supercharge growth at his portfolio of companies.

• Mr. Beast WhistleBlower - A former employee of Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson claims the viral star is a fraud and runs a huge scam on his followers, running fake contests, creating illegal lotteries that target kids, and selling fake autographs as genuine.

• The Gucci Goddess: A low-level army worker created a fake charity and funneled over $109 million in grant money to herself - a fraud she committed over 49 times against the government over 7 years.

• Major Mayor Scandal - Alice Leal Guo, the mayor of Bamban, a city in the Philippines, is accused of running a human trafficking and money laundering Pig Butchering operation in her city. The corruption runs deep!

• Scam Slaves—The Wall Street Journal goes deep inside this scam center to reveal what scam slaves experience and how they operate behind the scenes.

• Lie Detector App — Eyecanknow sells novel tech for $99 that works on your phone. They claim it is far more accurate than polygraphs. Apparently, half a million law enforcement officials use it.

• Half Way There - Meta bragged that they removed 63,000 accounts for sextortion scams and banned the Yahoo Boys from the platform by classifying them as a “dangerous organization”. The funny thing? There are still scores of Yahoo Boy groups they failed to remove.

• Clever - Westpac is releasing an In-App Calling feature on their mobile app to prevent impersonation scams.

Facebook’s New Downloadable AI Is Bad News For Fraud

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg announced Llama 3.1, a powerful 405,000,000,000-parameter AI model that can be downloaded, configured, and used by anyone in the world for free.

Security experts are aghast, with one of the most prominent AI experts in the world, Geoffrey Hinton, claiming that “ Cyber criminals will be delighted”.

Security researchers have already jailbroken the Facebook guardrails in the AI in less than 3 minutes!

Click to Read 👇️

The Refund Mafia - Chin Chopa Gets Chopped By Amazon Lawyers

Brazen thieves and customers went after Amazon, and now Amazon is going after them.

In a wide-sweeping lawsuit, Amazon continued its assault on professional refunders, going after first-party fraud “customers” who stole over $1 million in merch from them by claiming they received empty packages.

Click to Read 👇️

It’s Getting Real. HeyGen Releases Deepfake Chatbots

The digital doppelganger is one step closer to becoming a reality. This week, HeyGen released Interactive Avatars, essentially chatbots that use your voice and image to speak to people.

With two minutes of sample video, I used the service to create a FrankonFraud AI Chatbot. You can watch the video or even try the chatbot here. You must be signed into HeyGen, but they offer free subscriptions.

Click to Read 👇️ 

Zelle Fraud - Senate Blast Banks But Venmo and Cash App Get Pass

A Senate Report on Zelle was titled “A Fast and Easy Way To Lose Money”, so it’s no surprise that the report blasted banks’ reimbursement policies and provided some statistics to back up their claims.

Venmo and CashApp, which have notoriously higher fraud rates, skated by with no mention in the report.

Here are the 7 Biggest Takeaways from the Senate report which show exactly where this is probably heading - some big changes are coming here.

Click to Read 👇️ 

This Brilliant Question Saved Ferrari From A Massive Deepfake Scam

“Hey, did you hear about the big acquisition we’re planning? I could need your help,”. That was the message a Ferrari exec received from the CEO Benedetto Vigna.

Soon after, another message popped up “Be ready to sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement our lawyer is set to send you asap,” and the scam was in motion. What followed was a perfect deepfake voice call from the CEO that anyone would have believed.

It all might have gone terribly bad without this simple question that foiled the fraudsters.

Click to Read 👇️

Strange Deepfake - He Thinks He Is Getting Married

A man was convinced that he was engaged to a real-life Only Fans model, Corrina Kopf, after he received a deepfake video message from her.

The video is strange as the model tells him, “I don’t like how you are leaving me online like that. I already told you I’m Corinna Kopf, and I love you. I told you I lost my purse with all my information, and you said nothing.”

Click to Watch 👇️

Dirty Pop Uses Deepfake of Lou Pearlman PostHumously

Netflix’s new hit documentary Dirty Pop covers one of the longest and biggest Ponzi schemes in history. It’s a fascinating look back at Lou Pearlman, the creator of Back Streat Boys and NSYNCH, and how he pulled it all off.

Netflix used a bit of its own magic, creating an AI clone of Pearlman and using his voice and image to narrate the documentary. It’s bizarre, strange, and disturbing all at the same time.

Click to read 👇️ 

Got Fraudsters? Telegram Only Has 30 Employees for 1 Billion Users

The LinkedIn post of the week goes to Lenny Gusel, who posted some interesting details about how Telegram operates - they only have 30 employees and over 1 billion users of the platform worldwide.

Security experts call this information about a lack of employees a huge red flag.

FBI’s New CyberAction Team Jets In For High Alert Situations

As cyberattacks reach cataclysmic levels, the FBI has created a new cyber SWOT team that will mobilize and deploy anywhere in the world within hours.

Composed of about 65 members, CAT is an investigative rapid response fly team that leverages special agents, computer scientists, intelligence analysts, and information technology specialists across FBI field offices and Headquarters.

Click to Read 👇️ 

$820 A Week To Be a Fake Member Scamming People

Here’s an interesting ad soliciting people to work in scam centers. The job? Be a Fake Member in Cambodia- it’s a 12-hour shift, but you get free food and bed space. The good news is you get a reward if you scam people well enough 🥳 

Meta AI Says I Should Meditate So I Am Not So Frustrated With Fraud University 🧘‍♀️

As you know, I have been trying to get Meta to remove Facebook University from their platform. Despite at least 15 requests, they won’t. So I asked Meta’s AI model if I should consider meditation to calm down - and they agreed. I am going to practice some loving-kindness meditation 🤪 .

Women are Getting Rings, But Its a Scam To Drain Their Bank Accounts

A shop owner, Nena Rome, is warning ladies about a scam to drain their bank accounts.

It’s a clever scam that anyone could fall for. Be on the lookout and don’t click any QR codes when you receive something unexpected!

Click to Watch 👇️

@divineempresscoco

#duet with @Nena Rome #greenscreen BE SAFE

That’s it for the weekly edition of FrankonFraud. Happy fraud hunting, my friends. As always, if you want to share any new fraud trends with me, please give me a tip here. Thanks to Ken Palla, Mary Ann Miller, Jake Emry and Lenny Gusel for tips this week.

FrankonFraud