Am I Dating You?

For nearly two decades Alec Couros has been the target of scammers on the internet. A professor and public speaker from Canada, Alec discovered in 2007 that his photos were being stolen and used in romance scams. Since then, his face has been used thousands of times to con victims around the world. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I got weekly complaints, and then it became too daily complaints,
and at some point it was like I'd get several
per day. So over the time it was like literally
thousands that I basically had to sort out with and
it became a huge burden of my time on my
mental health.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Welcome to The Knife. I'm Hannah Smith. I am patia Eton.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
This week we speak with Alec Corros. Alec has been
the victim of online cameras for almost twenty years, and
we talked to him about how that happened and continues
to happen and all of the different ways that this
has affected his life.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Aleck is a professor at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.
We actually mentioned him in a previous off Record episode
one two, and then he reached out to us. Turns
out one of his students as a listener of The Knife,
and we are really excited to talk with Alec today.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
As a quick note, Aleck had just finished speaking at
a conference when we interviewed him, and so his voice
is just a little bit scratchy. Let's get into the interview.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Alec, thank you so much for joining us on the Knife.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah, we're so excited to speak with you. I mean,
when Hannah told me that you had emailed her after
our off record episode featuring your story came out, I
was like, wow, that's incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
It was cool. I actually had a student who was
a big time in your podcast, and she was excited.
She send me a message and she's saying like, this
is really cool. I love this podcast and your story
was featured, and so she was very happy, and so
I listened to it and I thought it was awesome.
So it's a delight to be here. So she actually
thought I could reach out and be able to tell

(02:00):
you a bit more about my story.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Yeah, we're so excited about that. As you mentioned, we
did touch on your story a little bit in a
previous off record. It started because I happened upon a
Reddit post that you made from twenty fifteen that is
titled for the past eight years my photos have been
used by romance scammers aka kat fishers. I really need

(02:23):
Reddit's help to have this get the attention of Facebook.
So we talked about what we're able to find online
and through interviews, but now here you are able to
tell us more about your experience, and we're going to
dig into that identity you know, fraud situation that happened
to you personally, but as well we're going to talk
like more broadly about identity fraud on the Internet and

(02:46):
how AI has really come to change that and progress that.
But first let's go back to the beginning. Can you
tell us, you know, how did this all start for
you personally? Like what was going on in your life
that first time that you were scammed? You know, how
did you first become aware that this was happening.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Sure, I'm happy to go back, you know, if we
kind of think collectively, going back to around two thousand
and seven, like Facebook was pretty new, like two thousand
and six ish. YouTube I think was two thousand and five.
The social web was very very new. I was presenting
a lot, I was spending, you know, I was a professor,

(03:28):
probably eight or nine years at that point, so fairly
still relatively early in my career. I was in Barcelona
for a conference. I was married at that point. I
was three or four years into being married. Back then,
I didn't really care about who posted on my Facebook,
So it was the settings were quite open, and people

(03:50):
posted things and strangers could read your posts and so on,
and people could interact, and you just weren't thinking about
that sort of thing, and so a lot of my
photos and my profile was certainly open to the world.
Very different today, and this was like it's Barcelona, but
I live in Canada, so you know, it was early then,
but late at night here in Canada, and I got

(04:11):
these frantic messages from my wife at the time, who
was quite upset about these. It was from someone named
I think it was Lori. I won't share the last name,
but it was someone who shared a number of posts
who they were really mad at me because I apparently

(04:32):
was in a relationship with this person, that this person
thought I was in a relationship with them, Like I
did really know what was going on at that time,
but they were they were mad because this person had
found out apparently that I was married, that I had
a child, that my wife at the time was pregnant
with the second and so I received this very frantic

(04:54):
email because I hadn't read these posts yet, but I
just heard from again my partner that you know, she
was quite upset at me, and like, what's going on
and then even my brother called and he's like, what's
going on here? And you know, just kind of been disbelieved,
like what's been going on? And it was really confusing
at that point, And I looked at the at the post,

(05:15):
I had no idea who this person was or why
they were thinking this, and at the time I really
just dismissed it as some sort of prank, Like I
didn't think that this person really truly believed that they
were in a relationship with me. I thought they were just,
you know, someone playing a joke on me or something.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Yeah, and so the posts or they're coming through his
posts on your page or messages, is that.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, Like there were posts on my public page so
that my partner and my brother could see this, everyone
could see this, so you know, it's my reputation, Like, yeah,
I'm basically there's a scandal on my Facebook page that is,
you know, goes against the reputation and so on.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
And do you recall, like not verbatim, but do you
recall what they said? Oh?

Speaker 2 (05:59):
It was it was very so much what I said before.
It was just like how, you know, how dare you've
been together for I forget the number of months. You know,
you've been together and you lied to me, and how
could you have had this wife? And I'm pregnant wife
you know at that time as well, like how could
you have done that sort of thing? And so it

(06:19):
was really this sort of sense of betrayal. But again
I thought this was like a prank. And I never
actually spoke to this person beyond this, Like I basically
said a couple of things, stop posting my wall and
blocked them. And then I thought it wasn't like a
big deal, like it was just it. It must have
been a prank.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
I think finding yourself in that situation where suddenly someone's
posting on your public Facebook wall that you have been
cheating on your wife essentially, and then your wife at
the time calls you. What was that conversation? Like was
she oh it wasn't good.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Worried?

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Like what was she like, Hey, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Well?

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, she was certainly worried. And the bad thing about
it is this person was from I mean, there's lots
of bad things about it, but one of the bad
things about it was it was a person in North Carolina.
I had been there once in my life, and it
just happened to have been in North Carolina for like
about ten hours, probably a few months before that, for

(07:14):
a speech I gave, So I just happened to have
been in North Carolina, and so it was like, this
is really strained. But this person thought we were in
a long term relationship. And so, yeah, it wasn't a
very pleasant conversation because you know, this is the first
that this ever happened, and you know, I'm away at
a conference, so I can't be there to like talk

(07:36):
about it. So we're on the phone, we're at different
time zones, so it was very uncomfortable and really left
it wasn't comfortable, and you know, after we kind of
looked at the facts and so on, like it was
pretty easy to see that this was not something I
had done. And I do believe, I think from what
I remember, and again this is two thousand and seven,
so I don't remember everything, but I do believe that

(07:58):
this person ended up also messaging my wife at the
time as well and trying to like work this up,
which made sense, like this is what you probably do
if you were actually in this situation, like you know,
to compare notes and that sort of thing, and the
notes didn't match up from what I understand or what
I remember. I wasn't privy to those particular conversations, but
you know, it was just sort of a settle thing.

(08:18):
We just you know, a day day or two beyond that,
It wasn't it wasn't a thing. I think. It was
just sort of like the strange thing. It was more like,
who's this person pranking? And why why are they doing
this on my wall?

Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah? Because it seemed so unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Right, yeah, And so it was more likely that it
was someone who didn't like me for whatever reason, and
you know.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Knows was like doing this mean thing to publicly shame
you and try to, you know, write cause trouble in
your life. But did you have any questions for her?
Does your wife have any questions for as far as
like when was the last time you saw him in person?

Speaker 2 (08:57):
So this person did? I do remember that this person
did say that they never saw me face to face,
and so even had I been in North Carolina, like,
they wouldn't have seen me anyways, But at that time,
it just wasn't plausible enough to ask more questions, which
saw of big things, So there was so it just
kind of left very like in subsequent matters. When this happened,

(09:21):
there are way more questions because it started happening happening,
there's there were more patterns here, more questions to ask
because it became you know, this is not just happening once.
It's happening a bunch of times.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
But in this first time that it happened. Is your
primary sort of takeaway, This is a prank. This is
a one off, and not that someone's been duped.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Absolutely, there was. There was no suspicion until years later,
like that this was actually something that was starting like this,
This was just the beginning of something, and that this
may have not have been the first one. You know,
who knows how many times had it happened before that,
but the person never contacted me, So this could have
happened been happening for you years before that. But for
some reason, the scammer in this case not only used

(10:05):
my photos, but they also used my name that wasn't
very typical at the time.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
Gotcha, So that's how she was able to track you down? Yes,
because the scammer used your real name?

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Right?

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Can you talk us through when you start to realize
that this is not an isolated incident, Like when does
that occur?

Speaker 2 (10:23):
I think it was like it wasn't until like this
just sort of stopped happening, like it was it was
the one time, and then I got infrequent messages once
in a while. But it wasn't until two or three
years that it really started to accelerate, and so I
got weekly complaints, and then it became too daily complaints,
and at some point it was like I'd get several

(10:45):
per day, and so over the time it was like
literally thousands that I basically had had the had had
to sort out with, and it became a huge burden
of my time on my mental health because I'm doing
multiple things there. First of all, you know, I think
it was all sorted with my family, like we understood this,
but in many cases their photos were being used, right,

(11:07):
So in some cases it's not just my identity, it's
because some of the photos they had were me of
me with my children and with my partner and with
my parents for instance.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
What you're saying is is people I'm guessing mostly women,
reaching out to you saying very similar perhaps to that
first person who you know put it on your Facebook wall,
is that Hey, I think we're in a relationship, or
they're reaching out assuming that they've been in some kind
of online relationship with you, and that this is supported

(11:46):
by these Facebook pages that are not yours, but that
when they're sent to you, you recognize that this is you.
This is not just you, but there's another Facebook page
that might be like your brother or parents. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Well, yeah, so there's very different complexities of this. So
the people that reached out to me were either people
were who were very mad at me that they think
they found the real meat, that I was the one
behind these profiles and so that I set fake profiles
with my face for whatever reason, or sometimes with my
own name, like sometimes they'd use my name. You know,
it really depended on how they use this. So people

(12:24):
would be very very mad at me because they think
that they found me and they found my real contact
information and they found out who I really was, or
they have discovered at some point that my photos were
being used. And this was largely due to the number
of sort of scammer reveal sites that came up on
the web, Like a lot of people who got scammed

(12:45):
in this way would create sites that like scam watch
and you know, similar varieties to that, which would list scammers,
and so a lot of victims would come together and
see sites like that. So they would see my name
and my face listed on these sites too, you know,
for people to avoid or photos to avoid. They'd often
say this person, if you've seen these photos, these belong

(13:06):
to doctor Ali Corros and he's a professor, and like
they'd get the backstory of who I am. So some
people would see these stories and then they contact me,
not mad at me, they'd sort of share their story
with me. Sometimes it would be, you know, really sad,
how they've sent a lot of money, they might have left,
their relationship that they might have been in like these.

(13:29):
You know, in one case, someone said that they'd mortgaged
their house or they you know, they liquidated their assets
because they'd often give all their money to the scammer
version of me. And so they were really really in
deep and with these particular relationships. And yeah, so it
was either mad or sad. And here I'm going to
share this story with you so that you can share

(13:51):
with others and for you to know or be aware.
And in some cases there's a few and I wouldn't
say they're rare, but probably you know, five or ten
percent and if not more of those cases, they're not
only sharing this for me, but they also had a
glimmer of hope like maybe I would be single and
available and perhaps interested in them still. And so even

(14:12):
though they fell in love with the wrong persona like
not my personality, not my words, but just the images themselves,
somehow they pieced together someone and they felt that it
was still possible or feasible to be with me, because
again they fell in love with someone who's not me,
who's not my voice in those cases, but my picture
is in something that they sort of pieced together from

(14:34):
these scammer calls and so on. And that was kind
of the sad part, like there's still some hope, right,
Like they felt they were heartbroken and really drawn in
and they didn't know what to do at that point.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
And as you're becoming more I mean it sounds like
you're getting, you know, dozens and then hundreds and thousands
of people writing to you over time, what what measures
do you take earlier on in this whole ordeal to
make your public persona online more private.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
So that was the difficult part, right, So there was
a choice there because you know, ever you know, people,
it's easy for people to say, like, you should just
lock up all your pictures, and I did. I locked
up a lot of pictures. But there was a point
that if you lock up more pictures, then the people
who are looking for you, who need to find you
that are in these scams, because the pictures are already out,

(15:31):
like they're gone, they're already in these databases they're shared
by scammers. I mean this is well, we often think,
like we if you watch the documentary like the cat
fishing documentaries and that sort of thing, like where the
term comes from and so on, they often project these
people as you know, people in the US, for instance,
who are doing this as something and they might know
the person or so on. But the reality is most

(15:53):
of these scams are perpetrated by people outside of the US,
outside of the Canadian or US jurisdiction. And these are
criminal activities. I mean this is these are dark terrorist
type activities that provide a lot of profit for these groups.
That it's organized crime. And so you know, there are
people who share photos up scammers that they've collected, they've

(16:14):
sort of gathered these and they share databases, so the
photos are out there already. So part of me is like,
if I make everything private, they'll never find who I
actually am, so the people who need to find me,
who are being scammed can't find me. And on the
other hand, and then I won't know, like it might
even get worse for me in some ways. And then
if I open it up, of course, then I'm you know,

(16:36):
more of my photos will be gone. So probably the
biggest choice on that front that I made was just
you know, not including children, not you know, being careful
in terms of what I share. Before then I didn't
really think that's using photos of my children would be
as big of a deal as it was. And even
thinking like now I have a photo that was used

(16:57):
in one of these scams. It was like when my
dad passed away in twenty thirteen, my mother's like on
his grave basically crying. Right, It's like, it's this incredibly
powerful photo, and I think, like, I'm sharing this because
I think it's important for me to share with the
people that I trust and I love, But that seem

(17:18):
like that endearing I'd love that photograph is powerful for
someone else to see and to use it in a
way that you would portray someone's trust to lie to them,
and so the power of photos. I was very cautious
in terms of what I shared beyond that point.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Wow, yeah, because at that point it's like your stuff
is already out there.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
So I can imagine that you would rather know if
your photos of you, your family, these very personal photos
are being used to cause harm and scam people and
take their money and abuse them emotionally. I mean, what
does that feel like to know that, like your personal photos,
things that you I think we all think of as ours,

(18:02):
like this is my family, this is my life, and
these are my photos, are being used in that way?
Like what does that feel like?

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, it's gross. It's like I don't know how the
word to describe it, but you know, it's gross thinking of,
you know, my children's photos and images being used in
these scams. Like it wasn't just the photos, but at
some point all right, so the sophisticated scam would be
So again it's not just email communication. This is they

(18:31):
were using Skype. Back then, it was an often video
the scameras typically you would say when when they tried
to turn on video, and back then the video was
harder to do, like it was more of an excuse
that was plausible, like your Skype's not working, my camera's
not working, whatever else makes more sense back then. Today
it's less, you know, you'd be have more of an
expectation for those things to work or to really prove

(18:52):
who that is. And of course there's complications with that
as well. But again this is this is organized crimes,
so it's not a single perpetrator behind this. So there
would be sophisticated photos. Take a Facebook profile, so there'd
be a fake me with whatever name. I remember one
was Alex Gallart, and then they'd take my mother's pictures

(19:14):
and then they would connect that to Alex Galler's Facebook profile,
and they'd take my daughter's photos and create another profile
so on, So there would be this it looks more
plausible that this is a real person, and then they
connect a bunch of fake profiles so it looks like
this person is a real person with a real daughter
and so on. Then they have someone talk to the victims,

(19:35):
not only from the person that's purported to be me,
but from my mother. So they'd have a mother scammer,
you know, or someone with a female boye talking to
them like it's my mother, and they'd have people talking
to them like it's my daughter. And so this really
really puts the nails in the coffin in terms of
like someone's belief or disbelief around us once you start

(19:57):
talking to the entire family. So it's gross on that level,
Like it's not only incredibly powerful for these cameras to
do that, because it really did the job to make
it like I'm not only talking to you, I'm developing
a relationship with your mother, your daughter is saying that
she wants to see me, and so on. But to
think that my kids, my family's identities were perpetrated and

(20:19):
you know and sort of brought into this like that
made me carry a lot of guilt around this. And
it's just like this is the thing, Like it's fine,
you're using mine. It's bad enough that you're taking these
people for all their money, but those aren't the only victims.
It's also my family, right, Like I didn't see by
myself as a victim, like I see the people that
are sending money and so on as a victim. I'm

(20:41):
not sure. I'm more of a medium, I guess in
some ways than a victim. But because the choices I
made in terms of what I put online. It did
affect my family and my family dynamics, and you know,
and in my children's future. I mean, their digital identities
are compromised because of things like that as well. So
I thing we have to think about is, you know,
of parents or guardians of children in terms of the

(21:03):
choices we make and what we share.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, I mean to be fair to you, though, in
two thousand and seven, everyone was putting everything on Facebook.
We didn't know, right, Yeah, I was in college at
that time, and I remember we would I would just
be hanging out with my friends. We would just take
random pictures of us hanging out. I'd be like, upload
fifty pictures to Facebook.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Oh, full albums of a single outing.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, yeah, for whatever reason. You know you were also
doing that like many people, but your photos were seized
upon And I'm sure this happened to other people as well,
But I mean, what a nightmare that is. So I
assume you, you know you did do things to try
to stop this. Yes, can you walk us through what

(21:48):
you did to try to stop the scammers?

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Most of it started on Facebook, and so there's a
lot of profiles like you put in my name and
you see a bunch of them. But of course all
of these people also gave me the profiles because it
was really hard to find, Like if I'm looking for
my face, it was hard to do that for quite
a while until Google brought in a tool called reverse
image search, where you could basically put in a photo
of yourself and then it would basically reverse search those images.

(22:15):
So you could find but you couldn't find really Facebook
profiles at the time, but you could find, you know,
other websites, and we can talk more about those as well.
But I would report the sites to Facebook and say
this is not me. Sometimes they would take down the
ones that were my name and my photos. So if
there was a profile that was like a fake profile,

(22:36):
that would violate the terms of service, and so they
would take it down. And there were my photographs but
not my name, so it was this Alex Gallard out
there with my names. It didn't fit within their terms
of service to actually take that down because this person
is not impersonating me, even though they're using my photos,
they're not impersonating me using their name by my name,

(22:56):
and so this sort of fell in this weird loophole.
So I had all of these profiles that I couldn't
take down that were clearly photos that I've used before that,
and if you put the dates on them, you could
trace them back to me as being the first one
to put them on if you look at facebooks on
dating mechanisms. But they still wouldn't take these things down.
So I was fairly connected in the sort of the

(23:20):
social tech world and most of the websites at the time,
social websites I could contact, but Facebook I couldn't, Like
there was no way to get through that wall. And
still today I think it's really difficult. But every once
in a while I'd go and I'd speak at tech
conferences and so on, and I'd find someone there who
worked for Facebook, and I'd talk to them and tell
them what's going on, and you know, they'd have a

(23:41):
Facebook email address and so on, and I tell them
and they'd be very like, Oh, this can't be happening.
We've we've got to do something about this, and they say, email,
meme will fix this. This happened three or four times,
and we might have a couple of communications the most,
and then it just went like silence, like they ghosted me.
After that, nothing ever came of that thing. And I

(24:02):
feel and I'm not going to you know, libel myself
or libel anyone else, but I always have the suspicion
like this is happening way more than it should be,
and I can't see that there wouldn't be a way
to stop this, Like even back then, AI would have
been able to duplicate or detect where these profiles being
built from, whether being mass produced or they taking images

(24:24):
from elsewhere. I know that there was a technology there
to deal with it. But when you're a publicly traded
company and you know you have my profile and the
thousand duplicates of it, that's going to do good for
your shareholders, and that's going to look kind of nice
that you are having a lot of growth even though
you know a huge number of those profiles are fake.

(24:47):
I mean, so there's lots of reasons why Facebook, in
my opinion, would not want to necessarily bring light to
this issue. And at the same time, you know, admit
that all of these profiles or a lot the growth
that they're seeing here are from fake profiles that they're
building on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
And so since you didn't get a lot of help
from Facebook, or at least in the way that you
had hoped. For whatever reasons, you end up creating a
website that you would send to people who reached out
to you. How did you decide what to put on
the website?

Speaker 2 (25:20):
By that point, when I put out a story, people
would see this and get interviewed by either the Canadian
CBC or a few American outlets. There's Australian outlets and
so on, and so a lot of this got into
the news. Most of that was either my reflection, so
I created blog posts about my experiences. There were other

(25:41):
people who wrote things about it at the same time,
but most of it was probably media articles from reputable
news sources about this, and so that was kind of
the main thing, just to provide you know, first of all,
I think on the website, and it wasn't much of
a website. It was just simply like, if you're reading this,
there's a good chance that you may have in fallen
victim to someone and explained who I was, and then

(26:04):
I wanted to give them credible evidence in terms of
like these are reputable news sources that you can read
and try to figure it out yourself. If you need
to contact me, contact me. So it was just sort
of like before you contact me angry or if you
or upset or whatever it might be, read these things
over and hopefully this can support you, because you know
otherwise I was just trying to explain this over and

(26:26):
over again to someone and in many cases again if
they were mad or if they didn't believe me, spending
way too much time on a daily basis trying to
convince someone that I wasn't the person scamming them For me,
It was a timesaver. At the same time, I think
it was good for others to be able to read
and sort these things out for themselves, to get some answers.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, and I'm curious, did anyone reach out to you,
like via call, text message, just try to see you
in person? Oh?

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, for sure. Sometimes threats like I think I saw,
I was just reading one and trying to going through
a bunch of them, you know, someone who is in
total disbelief. And I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. And
someone said something at the end of their message like
I know this is you. I'll see you soon in Reagina.

(27:15):
And this was the one of the few male ones
that were related to this, because it didn't have to
do with a romance scam, but it was someone who
believed I got into some sort of trade partnership with them.
It was someone from Russia. So I'm constantly google translating
this from Russia and this this person, I think that
their name was also Alex and they were sending me

(27:36):
like legal documents and so on in terms of what
I had done to them. And then they would actually
send emails to my like my boss, the presidents and
provost of my university, and so there's me like you know,
and then yeah, at some point that was in a
tenured then a non tenured like a non tenured position,
and then tenured position, but early in my career, and

(27:58):
so you know, I'm having to explain to my pres
it in provost ultimately or to my dean, like what's
this all about? Right, I'm going to have to go
through that. And that continued up until like until two
years ago we get a new president, you know, so
I'm having to talk to the new president both this
as well. It's embarrassing and also you know, potentially damaging

(28:18):
if this person's saying that one of your professors is
this sort of evil you know, money launderer or whatever
it might be. It gets old really quickly.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, I can imagine. And you know the first time
you became aware of this, this is in like two
thousand and seven, So this is years and years of
you dealing with this, your time, energy. Also, it affecting
your life, your relationships, your work. The last time you
spoke about it that I could find at least like
in an article was twenty twenty around then, and you

(28:53):
said at that time that it was still impacting your
daily life. How do things stand now? Is this still
happening regularly?

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Surprisingly, not as much like, I don't think it's stopped.
I think AI has done a big change to what's
happening here. I don't think anyone scamming these days needs
my photos anymore. They don't need anyone's photos anymore. The
fact that we're able to generate photos that are incredibly realistic,

(29:25):
that are of the same person, that you have a
continuous or you know, a profile that looks the same
in multiple photos, that you can create, video, that you
can create deep fake calls. All of the technology has
shifted in the last few years, and not just since
Chat GBT, Previous to that, even previous years before that,
they were using virtual cams. So right now, I know

(29:46):
that we're looking on a virtual cameraight now, looking at
each other. But truth be told, you don't for one
hundred percent, no, this is me like you. You may
not know this is me, Like I can use technology
today that would be incredibly convincing that this is I'm
using someone else's space at face. You see this in

(30:06):
bank fraud, you see this in romance scams. It's incredibly
convincing and really difficult to tell the difference anymore. Like
there was a time where I would get emails from
fake victims. Someone would say, I'm being victimized by this,
and what I need from you is a picture of

(30:27):
you holding a newspaper. I was saying, why would you
need that from me?

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (30:31):
And so I think this is a victim like wanting
me to do this for someone they're trying to convince, right,
And I'm like, no.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
It was a scammer trying to get trying to make
you think that they were a victim so that they
could get a picture to convince another victim.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Exactly right.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah. So stuff like that so tricky because some of
the photoshops that I saw were terrible. The videos that
I saw were terrible that they were so like not
convincing at that point when you're truly in love. Like
basically I saw communications from some you know of these
victims who for the longest time they talk text, but

(31:12):
then they'd start demanding video like phone was easy, but
I've never seen you on video. You always see your
webcam is broken and so on. And then so what
they would often do is these they'd use. They'd take
a video of me, like I've got tons of videos
of me lecturing because I taught online courses for a
long time and a lot of those were open. You
just need a few seconds without audio of me looking

(31:33):
like I'm attempting to come onto a webcam and then
going off, Like a few seconds might be enough to
convince a person that I really saw you. Because but
at the same time, you're using a virtual cam, so
rather than me using a live cam, I'm just using
a virtual cam. There's like tools like mini caam or
obs or whatever else that you can use, so you're
playing video over the webcam versus actually live a live stream.

(31:56):
And so that was used for some time.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
They would have a video that looked like you were
trying to connect and then it would.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Drop out, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
But that was enough to be like, well, see, look me,
I'm here, I'm a person, I'm trying to connect.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, gosh, yeah, And so you'd see that for seconds,
you don't say word. But again, for the people who
really want to believe that, they want to believe, they
want to know this is true, and so that's enough
to convince them. And you know, if you're not going
to be hyper critical when you're vulnerable.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
Yeah, definitely. Did you ever find out who was behind this?
Was it one person? Was it multiple people behind using
your photo specifically to scam thousands of people?

Speaker 2 (32:38):
So every once in a while I'd be able to
talk to a scammer, so in some sort and again
this wasn't just one scammer like these were. I can't
tell you for sure. It could be dozens, it could
be hundreds. But when I did get a chance to
talk to a scammer, i'd guilt them. They'd be from
certain countries. I'm not going to get into the countries
they're from, just because I don't want to racialize these

(32:59):
types of scams on but they would be part of
a criminal organization. They'd often say that they were the
foot soldiers. Like there are people who were in conditions
that they're basically forced to do this as part of,
you know, this organization that they're within, and I'm going
to I'm not going to totally let them off the
hook in that sense, but there is some coursion that
we don't perhaps anticipate or understand, and you know, in

(33:23):
this world, like even in some cases from what I
understand is some of the people that were victimized, so
women in the US, for instance, or in Brazil that
I ran into like online, when they communicate with me,
they became so vulnerable because whether they were coursed or
you know, falling in love with the people that were

(33:43):
actually behind them. In some cases they'd said I'm not
al curos, I'm this person, and then they'd fall in
love with this person. They'd you know, they'd actually be
vulnerable over these other people that they'd be okay with
the fact that it wasn't me in the first place,
but maybe they'd lose their house, lose all their money,
are all their financial bearings, and these people would be

(34:03):
enlisted to do some of the scams themselves, so they
become the mothers and the daughters, you know, So they
became part of the project as well, because they're financially
and emotionally vulnerable, and so they become part of it.
So it's not only just foot soldiers.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
So they would have lost all of this money to
having been scammed and then realized it, and then the
scammer would say, we can help you get this money back.
Here's what you have to do.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Absolutely, so you'd become part of it. So you're most
vulnerable because you are connected to this person. And even
though they're not the person that they said that they were,
you still have an emotional tie because the wards were theirs.
Whatever they say that, they're still that person who they are.
May sometimes say that they would the scammers would say like, actually,
I was trying to scam you, but over this course

(34:51):
of time, I actually fell in love with you. Oh
my gosh. I twist the narrative a little bit. Whether
it's true or not, I can't tell you the heart
of the scammer, but you know, I'm thinking that it's
just they got to find out so they have to
switch gears, you know, they have to switch gears and
do that sort of thing, so the person remains in
love with them and vulnerable, and then all of their

(35:12):
economic liability is gone. So they become part of these scammers.
And they're even more vulnerable from a legal perspective because
they're in the US in most cases and you know,
governed by the laws there, and so they're the ones
who are doing the transactions. They're the ones who are
you know, sending money to these countries and so on.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
They're the ones that could potentially be prosecuted if it
came to that, because absolutely, as we see more and more,
especially with international scammers, there's like this huge question of jurisdiction.
And I mean there's a lot of problems with getting
any kind of justice, but if someone's in another country
like the US, local enforcement's not going to do anything

(35:52):
about it.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah. I did a keynote presentation about these deep fake
scams at the organization for all of the police chiefs
in the entire country and basically, at some point I said,
what are you going to do about this? And it
was an absolute silence, like from police chiefs who you
would think that Cross Canada would have some sense of

(36:15):
what they can do about it. But it was just like,
we can't do anything about this, Like there's too many
of these problems. It's outside of our jurisdiction. We have
no teeth elsewhere, we can't do much about it. I mean,
they can deal with some of the local ones. But
as I mentioned just before, these aren't the people that
are probably the ones that should be prosecuted to the
extent of the law. They're not the ones that initiated

(36:37):
these things. They're not the ones that control the transactions
or benefit from the transactions. They're victims who have been
re victimized in many ways. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah, it's like I wonder if maybe not that this
is a solution, but just educating people who are in
more vulnerable populations falling for things like this, like maybe
you know, elderly people or whoever their main sort of
target is, and I don't know exactly how you reach them,
but just getting the word out.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
See that's a good point, Like this is how they
one of the scammeras mentioned, this is how they found
their victims. They look for in particular cases, they look
for highly religious individuals who were widowed and of a
certain age, And back then it was much easier to
find those people on Facebook, Like you can pull up
a victim list very quickly if you're looking for keywords

(37:26):
that for like widowed or widow er, god fearing, that
sort of thing, and those are that particular perspective, and
so the widowed widower. You know, these are women who
are middle aged or older or elderly who have never
done online dating before. And it was amazing how many
times I heard from a victim who said, the only

(37:47):
reason I started finding these people online is because I
was with my husband my entire life. I never dated online.
And then my daughter said, go get out there and
you can find someone.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
So on.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
And that's the worst advice you can give to your
elderly parent who hasn't had any perception of what the
internet is or Internet scammers and so on, Like it's
not going to be a good ride for them. There's
not a lot of people out there that are going
to be sort of available in the pool that you want. Yeah, right,
So I would not recommend it to anyone. So in
many ways, daughters implicating and not daughters in all cases,
but you know, whoever encouraged people to get online, but

(38:21):
it was even things like it wasn't just dating sites,
like there was all sorts of dating sites implicated, like
you know, Christian Mingle and e Harmony and all of
those sites, but it was things like Words with Friends.
I don't know if you remember that, yeah, yeah, with
that one was like quoted a number of times where
someone just became your Words with Friends partner and you
basically played with them long enough and you gained a

(38:43):
relationship over there. So it was like, Wow, what a
demographic word. It's for friends. It's not like young hipteen
for the most part, right right, Well.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
This is the big question because I think that educating
people is super important. I mean, I think talking about
scam's and I care about that a lot. We've talked
about it, we continue to talk about it on our
podcast because it's just happening more and more and more,
and so educating is certainly important, and spreading the news
that this is happening, so like, be careful. But the

(39:14):
advancement is happening so quickly. It's like there's a gap
between how quickly these scams are progressing and evolving and
how slowly we are to respond. I'm thinking about even Facebook,
you know, as an example, and how much we started
to see this happening of people being scammed on Facebook,
only because it was like one of the first sort

(39:36):
of social media sites where people got on and we're
sharing tons of photos and it was used by such
a wide portion of the population as opposed to smaller
social media things. Then it just started happening, and it
was such a long period of time realistically until Facebook
responded and only recently has really cracked down on this.
But then, as you have explained, it just diverts the

(40:00):
scammers to a different platform and a new platform and
apps like a game that you play on your phone,
or dating apps, and now we have AI. So you know,
it's something that I'm curious. I imagine you probably think
about a lot as a professor and someone who talks
about social media and technology, about like what needs to happen.

(40:22):
I don't know if you think that policy like from
a governmental level would work, or if tech companies need
to start changing, But it sort of feels like we're
just not responding quickly enough.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
I agree, I am. I think there's some regulation that
could be done. I mean, I think the governments are
really reluctant to put any regulation on social media companies
or we'd have a much more pleasant ways to go.
There's particular articles around online safety that puts away the
liability of social media companies, like anything the users do,

(40:54):
it's not the platform's fault. That's a big issue for sure.
But I think, you know, you were speaking earlier about
educating people, and I do think that's the biggest thing,
is sort of having much broader and much you know,
much more uniform and universal education on some of these scams.
Like yesterday, I heard from the bank that I bank

(41:15):
with and they're putting out information around deep Fix, and
I think that's great and to be worried about deep
Fix and that sort of thing, But like where were
you five years ago when it started or ten years
ago when it started, And all of a sudden, it's
becoming a big issue because banks are become let implicated
and it's affecting their bottom line because you're seeing examples
of people pretending to be whoever a banker on the

(41:38):
other end, and they're getting your bank information. So people
don't get a sense of that. But like just like
two days ago or three days ago, like Sora too,
you know, based on when we're recording this podcast. Sora Too,
which is the video engine from open Ai, came up
with a cameo feature, so you can have Sam Altman
and create a video of him saying whatever, and that

(41:59):
could be saying something like, you know, like send me
money or you know, I'm going public with OpenAI and
you know, if you want to be in an early investor, like,
you can do that with that app right now, like
if you have access to it. It's incredibly realistic. Google's
bo three has been around for a while and although
they say that you can't create celebrities, it doesn't have
to be celebrities. You can create really convincing videos saying

(42:22):
whatever creating person is saying anything you want. So you
can do this live. You can do this and create
videos of this. The genie is out of the bottle,
like it's we're at the point where the technology is
just so incredibly convincing and it's only getting better every
single day. If you're not good at Facebook, it doesn't matter.
You can use Google's Gemini today just to get into
a bunch of tools just to say I want a

(42:44):
person that looks like this holding this with the science
saying this, and you know, it's really really simple to
do that within seconds. So you don't have to know photoshop.
You don't have to have technical skills to create fake
looking things. You just have to speak in natural language.
Like it's not about coding anymore. It's natural language. If
you can speak in terms of what you want, you
can have what you want. And it's scary, Like it's

(43:06):
really scary. And then I can project it over a webcam.
I can take someone's over face of someone's face over
a webcam. I can have this entire conversation with you
just using someone else's space. Like, so you know, the
education is long, do regulations not can happen as quickly
as we'd want it to happen, and a lot of
people are going to get burned.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
I think recently in the news there was a story
about a woman who unfortunately was scammed into thinking that
she was dating Brad Pitt and they were like these
kind of awful photoshop pictures of him. But there's also
this side of it that is like the non celebrity
of it all makes it that much more believable. Yeah,
and deep fakes are I mean, there's so much more

(43:49):
common now even than they were. It's like I'll be
on Instagram and I'll be scrolling through the ads and
I'll see a deep fake of Oprah promoting something. I'm like,
there's no way Oprah's behind this.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
Right, I've got a government or I forget his name
that There's a lot of people in that space, you know,
who are Joe Rogan's or whatever else. You have prominent
podcasters that are saying by these vitamins or whatever else,
and it sent you to a link that's something that's
totally you know, different, and you know things that are
plausible for these particular influencers. Yeah, you can develop that,

(44:21):
but it can be again anyone. So I can just
I can create a fake profile on something like Tinder.
I can fake my my location. So I'm and it's
happened in some cases, like I've had people that I
know through social connections and they say, oh, by the way,
you just showed up on Tinder in North Carolina or
I know some problem some state or something like that,
and they kind of laugh. And so they notice me

(44:44):
and they know who I am, just because I have
a fairly large online profile and so at least they know.
But from that point, if I connect with someone, you know,
through that app or or whoever, you create the most
handsome or beautiful person just to you know, try to
get you know, your swipe left or right. I don't
even don't ever use the app one of those two,

(45:05):
you know, and then connect with someone. Then of course
from that face you can use and create video, you
can connect online. So it can be incredibly incredibly convinced things.
So again, really tough to discern truth from I think
big today.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Yeah, on this note, just the difficulty of telling something
that's real from something that's not. I don't know, it's
like I think, because it's getting so much harder to
decipher that. Yeah, Like a lot of people will be tricked.
So it's like, what do you do if you're trying
to date on tender you meet someone and it looks
very convincing. I guess you just have to like see
people in person. Like I feel like that's is that

(45:42):
like literally the only answer.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Basically, I think. I mean, there's there's there's things that
social media companies could do to make those things better,
but they kind of interrupt the whole privacy piece too.
Like I think it's great to be able to have
like a verified profile, like something that on the web
that says like these things me and this kind of
these profiles are connected to me, and I think social
media companies can do that, but at the same time,

(46:06):
people are targeted in that way. So like there's something
around anonymity as much as free speech is happening in
different ways, and look at different ways in the US
right now, and it's a bit and turmoil. There's a
need for many people that they're incredibly vulnerable, to be
able to speak anonymously. And so when you apply, you know,
if you apply a solution for dating and deep face

(46:26):
and that sort of thing that is much more like
we need to verify profiles, you might take away from
some other problem on the web where people need anonymity.
So I kind of understand recognize that tension that you know,
if we fix one problem, we're going to you know,
make something really much more difficult for other people as well.
And so yeah, I think you're right, Like I think,

(46:46):
you know, meeting someone face to face, that that's going
to be an important piece of that. But some people,
you know, they recognize that you're not going to be
able to meet face to face. Like I remember, you know,
back in my day, like falling in love with someone
over the phone, Like the phone was enough. I didn't
have to see this person. You spend hours and hours

(47:07):
talking to someone, charging up a tremendous long distance bill
right back in the day. And like any medium where
you can connect to someone, you're going to you have
the potential to fall in love. And there are people
who have long distance relationships that are valid and are
beautiful and have all those things. But we have to

(47:27):
be able to be able to do that too. So
there's still a number of people who are going to
be vulnerable, who are sort of getting into those relationships
where it's just not feasible to find your life partner
or your soulmate or whatever it might be through a
very early initial pace to pace interaction. Right. So, I
think people are finding each other much more globally, and
you know, not necessarily from their jurisdiction. We're we're not

(47:49):
in the generation where you're going to marry the person
who you met in kindergarten, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
It's like the beautiful part of the Internet and early
Internet where it opened up and it was like, wow,
I can meet people outside of my town, my specific area.
I mean, probably most people that are together these days
met online, Like I wouldn't be with my partner if
it weren't for online dating.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
I met my husband on Match before there was an app,
Like we were both twenty four, and I would have
never met him.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
He lived in Westwood.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
That's exactly it, right, Like I think and like saying
it's the beautiful part of web. That is the beautiful
part of the Web, and like to deny that from
others just because, like we have to. We're getting to
the point where it's so the web has become so
difficult to trust, Like I think it just takes a
big part of it, Like the web is us. It's

(48:43):
like it's beauty, It's I often use the hashtags shiny,
happy Internet. It's like it's just that there are some
things that we see online, especially in the early web,
that were just beautiful, you know, stories of people connecting
and so on, and so it's really tarnished that aspect
of it, and I think it really take away your
dating pool and your possibilities for happiness and you know, companionship.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
I'm curious. I guess it's changing gears a little bit,
but I'm curious. When was the last time you received
a message from someone who believed that you were someone else.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
You know, it's been a couple of months, and this
is really rare, so like, and it's just probably this
past year, I've maybe received seven or eight, I think,
so it's been slowed down a lot tremendously, and I
don't see as many reports. Like there's a scam site
that I used to check all the time, and I
haven't seen many pop up there anymore. So, like I

(49:34):
was wondering for the longest time, like why, Like I'm not,
like I'm not a web celebrity in a big sense,
but I'm out there enough that people can recognize, like
they can do a quick Google search and verify who
I am. I was always wondering, like why they were
using my photos at all when they could use someone that
would be much less No, and I guess much easier
to find. So on, Like I know this is happening

(49:56):
to me, but I think there's a lot of people
who don't know that it's happened to them. So, like
going back earlier to that advice where you know, people
who could lock things up if someone maybe maybe their
Facebook profile was just public for just a little while
then they lock things up. Those people's photos might be being used,
and those people have no idea that their photos are

(50:17):
being used. And I guess part of for me to understand,
like for me to have known this in the first place,
it's kind of a double edged swort to have it open.
I guess people are able to find me and tell
me about this, But some people who've been compromised in
a very small way, or there's been one of the
websites hacked, for instance, and then there's a website hackings
that happen all the time. You know, if you get

(50:37):
your photos get compromised, you may not know this is
happening to you. But I really do think that AI
has really been the change here, Like if I was
a scammer, I wouldn't be using anyone's photos. Like that's
kind of the silliest way to do these things. You're
going to get caught.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
I have another question actually about people reaching out to you,
which is, even though you know now you have like
a way to show them pretty quickly. Here's what has
happened in instances where people have given up a lot
of money or lost something to these scammers. Has anyone
ever then asked you for their money back.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Unfortunately not or fortunately not. I guess I don't know
how to look at that. M So at that point,
like the most that's ever come up from those circumstances
that they're not except for that the Russian man, I
think he's the only one that's after me. I've never
been asked for the money back, but I have been
sort of like, so are you open to a relationship

(51:33):
or your single that sort of thing like. And that's
one of the sad things I see on a lot
of this is I'll even say I'm sorry that he
lost his money, and the common response from many of
these victims is like the money, like, I'll deal with it,
I'll live with it. What I can't live with is
my broken heart. Like it's really like these people have
been drawn into this thing and they don't care about

(51:54):
the money at that time. Of course they care about it,
but the betrayal is not about money. The betrayal is
about like, I've spent months or even years in these
cases where I've given you not just money, but I've
given you my heart. I've given you my some of
the best years of my life, you know, some of
the dating years that you know that the opportunities that
I've lost maybe to be in a relationship with someone

(52:16):
else heartbreaking. So that's what they've lost. You can't You know,
you can find money at some point, but you're not
going to be able to take those years back right in.
The betrayal of the trust and her break is hard.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
I was wondering if anyone had ever asked you as
a follow up to that, to corroborate their story, if
they filed a police report or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
No, not that I know of. In one case, sort
of the opposite, I've had one person who's been well.
She stopped over the last year, although I think in
the last year semi one, but probably since about twenty fifteen.
There's this one person in the US that's been really convinced.
I think I think she's particularly vulnerable. I don't think

(52:59):
she's her her mental health is very well, or she's
not doing very well from that perspective. She sent me
all sorts of images, and she sent me lots of
communication where I have to convince her. I think I'm
convincing her that I'm not in a relationship with her,
and then she'll send me something else like that she's
been in recontact with they had their version of me,

(53:19):
and then she believes she's in contact with me, and
she thinks I'm just kind of going back and she's
confused and so on. She sent me like really explicit
pictures and so on and stuff that's gross in the
sense that it's like she talks about my children like
she knows them and that she's gonna be with them.
And at some point, like she harassed me to the
point where I had to call the police on her,

(53:41):
and just like I sort of identified where she lived,
I called the local police, and it was interesting that
this is like a small town in in a state somewhere,
and the police knew who she was as soon as
I mentioned who it was and go, oh, so, like
there's some story there, and they realized that she will
maybe mentally unwell all And again that's sort of like

(54:02):
a victim who's been been compromising in a particular way
and being really leveraging that way. So I feel really
bad for this person. But this is one person who
for the longest time she was posting like she's had
websites where she's like the future doctor Corros and like

(54:23):
posts that onto my and has lots of multiple profiles,
and she posts that onto my socials as well, Like
she finds a new profile and posts it on on
some of my profiles, which is just you know, for
people who don't know me, like I always there's a
lot of people that know me pretty well and understand
this is going on. For the person who's you know,
doesn't know me well and who's new to me, like

(54:44):
seeing that sort of stuff. Again, I don't like taking
those hits on my reputation.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
That's understandable for sure. Yeah, yikes. Yeah, sad, sad all around,
but you got to do it.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
And I feel bad for this person and I hope
she gets the help speeds. But she's really really being victimized.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah, acknowledging that the betrayal in the heartbreak is where
you see these victims hurting the most. I'm curious just
to get a sense of the scope here, if you
have any sort of ballpark estimate of how much money
these scammers have taken from people just using your persona.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, it's hard to know that for sure, but what's
been estimated to me, like a way I've seen houses
in some cases figures of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For some reason, I see certain countries victimize more, so
you'll see like it'll be reported non US dollars. So
I get a lot of people from Brazil that tend

(55:48):
to be victims. For instance, South America seems to be
very big, a lot of southern states, some places in Europe,
for instance. But what I can ascertain from what they've said,
just the numbers that they've shared, there have been well
over like well over a million dollars. And that's just
from a few cases. Not everyone implicates. Like I have
a I don't know one that I mentioned that's sort
of this long term person that I've had to call

(56:10):
the police on. She sent me like photos of like
gift cards, like's probably one hundred gift cards, and I
don't know what the values are on allos. And that's
often a way that they'll get money, so I don't
know what that's worth. But this is a person that
doesn't have a lot of money, but every time she
has money, she sends gift cards. So I have all
of these images of gift cards that have been scratched

(56:31):
and really real to other people. So at least a
million dollars from what's been declared to me, I suspect
that's probably only about five percent of what I'm probably seeing,
So I'm assuming there's quite a bit more. Wow, and
I kind of darify any of that for sure.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah, but I mean just it's telling just from what
people have shared with you. And yeah, I mean it's
an incredible loss for anyone who found themselves in a
situation where they believed that someone loved them. I mean,
if you're dating someone and you are that deep into it,
I'm sure you've told people in your life about them too,
and so it's probably not even a secret in their world,

(57:08):
and then they have to reconcile. Actually I got scammed.
There's so much even though there shouldn't be shame and
embarrassment around it, because it could truly happen to anyone,
there is and that is just it is heartbn ching.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Well, and that's one of the tactics that these scammers
do is they try to get you away from their
friends because often they can set the alarm and that
sort of thing. So they will try to isolate you,
like they'll say things like our love people wouldn't understand it,
and you know, because it's an online thing. I think
you have to recognize that this is not just the
only uneducated or vulnerable people. I've had very well educated

(57:45):
professors and professionals who have said, I'm incredibly embarrassed by it,
like I fail for this. And they just happen to
be of that certain demographic that they're vulnerable emotionally, not
necessarily from you know, from a lack of lack of understanding.
They just got kind of caught up with these things
and they thought it was true. And so this happens everyone.

(58:08):
And I guess I mean lack of general education. They
may not have known a lot about scams, but you know,
well educated in other respects, intelligence and so on. This
can happen to anyone.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Oh yeah, I mean, Hannah and I've been covering different
instances of fraud for so long now, and it is
certainly not determined by someone's intelligence or level of education.
The people who do this, who scam people, are just
very good at it.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
They're very good and the scripts they share, it's not
only the photos they share, they share scripts, scenarios. They
are incredibly organized in terms of what they need to do,
Like this is just so well done. They know psychology
better than most psychology grads will understand in terms of
how they can actually dominate, leverage human psychology and really

(58:56):
you know, get people to do what they want. Like
this is an incredible persuasion, and this is done because
of so much repetition. They're doing this over and over again.
They're successful. They're sharing it with friends or their their colleagues,
I guess, And yeah, I mean at that point, I mean,
we are beings who are incredibly vulnerable from a psychological perspective,
from an emotional perspective. And you see this in politics.

(59:18):
You see this in government, politicians and so on. People
can be made vulnerable and that can be leveraged for
your advantage in whatever way you might want to do that.
And so yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Be careful out there.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yeah, send any any money or a picture of me,
just just it's not me. Well, you're a student who
called out our podcast. She has great taste.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
I think she does. Yeah. Sure.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
Plus plus, thank you so much for joining us, Alec
and talking us through all of this. It's been really
interesting and informative.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
It's been great. It's nice to be able to voice
the us out and just say the things that, you know,
it kind of helps me put things together as well
in my mind and reform this. And so I really recognize,
you know, the power of these questions and for you
to be able to share this to a wider audience,
I think it's great. I really appreciate your desire to
do that and for being a guest today.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Thanks for taking the time. So, Hannah, after our off
record episode, which is number one twenty two for anyone
who wants to go back and listen that hasn't after
that episode released, you heard from Alec.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Yeah, he listened to the podcast and reached out to
me and was like, thanks for spreading the word. And
then because there weren't any recent articles about him, I
think the last one that I had found was like
from twenty twenty. It was curious to talk to him
about if it was still happening, especially with the use
of AI now, like things have just changed so much

(01:00:53):
in the last five years. So I was really excited
that he agreed to come on the show and like
talk to us more about his story. In the episode,
I think you asked him, you know, do you know
how much money was taken overall by this scammer or
group of scammers using his photo. Yeah, I think he
estimated like a million dollars or something.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
He hastimated a million dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Yeah, So then he actually emailed me and followed up
after the interview. You know, he said, after reviewing some
of the information and considering my previous messages, I realized
that I likely underestimated the total amount involved. There are
people that reached out to him said that they had
to like foreclose their house, who had given you know,
a lot of their savings to different scammers. Like people
lost a lot of money, and he thinks, he said,

(01:01:35):
he can't verify this, but he believes that it would
be more like multiple millions, probably between three and ten million. Wow,
that he would estimate as he just pieced together their
messages he's gotten from people. So this is like a
massive scam being orchestrated with his face, with his face
and in other instances, like more pieces of his identity

(01:01:57):
than just that. So this estimate he's given us is
still only based on the people who have managed to
find him and share their story. Yes, and not all
of the people that we know haven't. Yeah, that's a
good point. So it could be much more than that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
So much more. Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty
great that he has chosen to face this head on
when he could easily not respond to these messages. This
has nothing to do with him, yeah, other than that
someone stole his photo, but he takes the time, and
he has taken the time to like, here's the story,
so that he can relay that to someone who's going

(01:02:32):
through it and hopefully stop them from giving more money
to these people.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Yeah. It was interesting though to hear him talk about
these type of scams and how they run like well
oiled machines. Yeah, and how usually it's not just like
one person doing this, it's someone who's connected to an
organization that is scamming people, and that there could be
a lot of factors at play, like people could be
coerced to be part of this, you know, scammer organization.

(01:02:59):
And I feel like we see more and more of
that actually happening. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
So I actually listened to an episode of Criminal. It
was titled The Compound, and it was about a woman
who thought she had gotten a new administrative role. This
is in another country outside of the US, and she
was given all these directions she was relocating for this job,
and she gets there and realizes that she's basically held

(01:03:24):
captive and being forced to operate as part of this
organized crime unit scamming people everything from romance scams to
other types of fraud, and essentially a prisoner and they
have to meet these quotas. And she never wanted to
do this, she never wanted to be there. It's called
the Compound. It's on the Criminal Feed, and it was

(01:03:47):
just a really informative episode.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
I mean, we love Criminal a great show. Yeah, yeah,
you know. Okay, So I think that is something that
is happening so often, and like when you get a
call or whatever from a scammer, that it's probably not
just a person randomly doing this. They're probably involved in
some sort of scheme or organization. Maybe not always, but

(01:04:12):
probably about a year ago, I got a call and look,
I think I pretty quickly like realized I think this
is a scam, but of course I was sort of
interested to see where it went. So this guy calls
me and he's like, he says, his name is Lieutenant
Justin Bruce.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
I mean, it sounds like someone we would have reached
out to at some point.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Really, and he's like, you know, Basically the whole thing
he's trying to say is you didn't show up for
jury duty. It's one of these scams, and you know,
now there's a fine. He gives me this reference number
FTA one one two nine dash, like you know what,
so official, and I'm like, where am I supposed to
put this reference number in? You know? And so I
sort of started googling and quickly realized, like, this is

(01:04:49):
for sure a scam. He's trying to get me to
pay five hundred dollars supposed to thirty two dollars service
fee so that you're not in contempt of court. And
eventually I just was like, well, I know this is
a scam. And I was surprised because he was like,
oh you do, And I was like, yeah, I actually
work in podcasting and true crime and I do a
lot of research about scams, and so I'm pretty familiar

(01:05:12):
that this is a scam. And he was like, oh wow, yeah.
So then he just starts talking to me. He says
he's been in prison in Georgia for seven years, oh
my gosh, and he he was going to get out
in like six months or something. So he just started
to ask him, like what is the scam, you know, like,
do you make money on this? To people? And he's
like yeah, you know, and most people like don't fall
for it, but sometimes we do get people who are

(01:05:34):
giving money. And he said that he worked for basically
a gang like in prison, and that he had connected
with them in order to be safe and survive in prison,
and part of his role was that he kept all
the cell phones that they used in his cell and
that he had to do a certain amount of calls,

(01:05:54):
and that there was someone in the group who would
come up with these schemes. There was multiple of them,
you know, This Lieutenant Justin Bruce was one of these.
So they come up with a reference number and all
of this stuff to try to make it seem real.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Like a lieutenant of what sir, Yeah, what.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Are we talking about? But I don't know. It's interesting
because he was like he kind of was looking at
like a job that he had and that he was
able to survive this way, and he's like, I don't
feel good about it, but it's not like I have
other ways of making money in here and I've been
able to survive.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Anyway, so I sort of wanted to interview him, but
then he started to get like sort of creepy and flirty,
and I was like, oh, no, we're going to have
to hang up and never talk to you again. But
I do wish him the best, and I thought I
was interesting to hear that. Wow, like these scams are
even coming out of prisons.

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
I mean, similar to this episode I was talking about
with on the Criminal Feeds. He doesn't want to be
doing this. He feels like he has no choice, and
maybe he doesn't. I've never been in that situation, but
it's terrible because a lot of the people that fall
for scams are elderly. Maybe they're alone and they don't
know any better. There's no one they can ask, or

(01:07:06):
they can't hop on Google and see yeah and yeah.
One of those people was almost my grandpa, Oh my gosh. Yeah,
and so I called him Poppy. He has since passed away,
but my whole life was just so close to Poppy.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
He was just the best. I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Yeah, And we talked all the time. And when I
actually was going through my archives to pull up this
letter about the scam I'm going to tell you about,
I showed you on zoom. It was so thick. It
was like five inches thick of just letters from him.
He was the best, and I talked to him all
about like my life, you know, we just talked about everything.
And I had moved to Los Angeles a few years

(01:07:43):
before this happened, so he knew I was like in
this big city, and I think he worried a little bit.
But yeah, so we'd been talking all the time, and
then in October I got a letter from him, which
usually was just like a silly old family photo with
the story and socks from Costco, like that's usually what
he said. But this letter, so I got it, and

(01:08:04):
I'll read it because this is all the context I
had when I received it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
Was just a letter.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Okay, Patia, can't get over our recent phone talk. You
only had one glass of wine. Don't want to call
your father. You were vague on the rules and of bonds.
I didn't not call your father because you made me
promise not to for me, this doesn't add up. You
surely sound poorly, so very sorry, so sorry, Poppy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Oh my gosh, that's heartbreaking. Yeah, heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
And he was in his eighties and so I call
him when I get this, and I'm like, what is
this letter? I said, I don't know what you're talking about.
I had no idea about the scam at this point,
I was not familiar. And he said that he had
gotten a call from me, or who he thought was me,
saying that I was in jail on the East Coast

(01:08:56):
and that I had been drinking and driving and been
pulled over and I needed him to bail me up,
and I didn't want my parents to know. And he's
not like a tech savvy person. He didn't know how
to get online and give money. So thankfully he didn't
end up giving them any money.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
That's good. But he was.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Distraught emotionally because for the week that passed between us
talking and me getting this letter, he thought that I
was in jail.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Why didn't they try calling you?

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
So I don't know, and it's possible that he did,
and I just, for whatever reason, hadn't called him back yet. Okay,
But if I had to guess, he didn't call because
he just thought he would hear from me.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
When I got out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Yeah, because he really believed it. Yeah, And he didn't
know how to FaceTime or anything. So all of our
communication was just letters and phone calls because he lived
in Naples, Florida and I was in Los Angeles. Yeah,
so yeah, I called him and I said, I haven't
been traveling. I've been here the whole time, and I
wasn't drinking and driving, and I've never been arrested or

(01:09:56):
to jail for anything. And he was like, I I think,
hesitant to believe me.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
And so then I'm getting online and I'm like, oh, scam,
this is scam.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
And so then I told him. I was like, Poppy, like,
you can always call my parents, Like, if you ever
think I'm in trouble, you can always call my parents.
Those are the kind of parents I have, and you
don't have to keep any secrets from them. I think
that made him feel like, oh, okay, you probably this
was probably not real. And then I got another little letter.

(01:10:27):
It said, I'll never get over thinking you were in
jail in Boston, Poppy. I mean, it's so sad.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
Oh no, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:37):
So luckily he didn't give any money, but he was
very upset because he thought I was just sitting in
some jail cell in a duy charge.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
That's heartbreaking, heart breaking. I'm glad that he believed you
and came around to understand that I know it's horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
I know, I'm like, Oh, what a sweet grandpa. He
had my back, he kept my secret. Not that I
think he should have, but he did really well.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Yeah, So I mean it's you know, these scams have
gone more elaborate over time, but it could really happen
to anybody. And I know we say that all the time,
but it's true. And something Alec talked about also is
like the shame and embarrassment that people feel, and it's
just really sad. And I think it's awesome that Alex
out there talking about it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
I do too.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
I also am like, I'm really hoping that there's some
sort of protections that happen with AI because if that
had happened, the same thing with your grandpa had happened,
And like, I don't know a few years even though
maybe now like someone could use an AI version of
your voice. Yeah, And then it's like, how is anyone
supposed to know if it's real or not?

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Oh totally or like the deep fakes that are coming out.
I mean, like we post our faces on social media,
it's not that hard to grab a picture of almost
anyone in these days. I watched this YouTube channel called
black Tail Studio. It's this guy in Oregon who makes
these like real cool epoxy tables. Okay, okay, so he

(01:12:03):
just moved to this like ranch and Oregon and mostly
my husband likes the tables.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
They're cool.

Speaker 1 (01:12:11):
I'm just waiting for him to get a horse. This
is my Like, I'm just like, please get a horse,
Please get a horse. So but anyway, I was watching
and he actually had someone pretend to be him and
sell someone at a table. And these tables are really expensive,
not that they're not worth it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Wait it wasn't him, someone pretended to be him. Yeah,
and he was exposing that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Right, and he was exposing it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
I see.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
The person that they were scamming was sent a video
of him talking to her, but it was a deep fake.
And this is like, it's a successful YouTube channel, but
it's not like this guy can't walk down the street
right right, right, and someone's making a deep fake of
him selling this table. Yeah, and he actually found the
person who had been scammed and made her a table,

(01:12:55):
which is so Sweet's nice?

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
Sorry, yeah, I mean, you know, in our conversation with Alec,
it was like very focused on education, which I think
is probably like the best thing that we can be
in control of. Right, as we keep talking about this,
hopefully people will be aware of these scams. But I
also just like really feel like there's going to have
to be some kind of regulation at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
There has to be more we can do to protect people.
I mean, even the fact that on your cell phone
now it's like potential spam. I'm not answering, and I
think that's so helpful. I like that it pops up
like that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
Yeah, yeah, Well, what an interesting conversation with Alec. I'm
so glad he joined us.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Yeah, thanks for listening.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
If you have a story for us, we would love
to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
at the Knife podcast or a Blue Sky at the
Knife Podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
by me Hannah Smith and me paytia Et.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer
is Christina Chamberlain. Music is by Birds in the Airport.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia
Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.