The "Torenza" video is believed to be AI-generated

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
The viral story of a woman arriving at JFK with
a passport from the non existent country toreenzas a recent
oas like LEONEI, I generated video that has spread on
social media. It is not a real incident and is
based on an older urban legend about a man from
the non existent country of Toward. The story claimed the

(00:25):
woman had arrived from Tokyo, her passport was floles, and
she was confused when told her country did not exist.
Some versions claimed she was from a parallel dimension and
vanished from custody. The video shows confused immigration officers and
the woman reportedly saying, then this isn't my world. The

(00:46):
truth The video is a work of fiction. There are
no official reports from JFK Airport, US Customs and Border Protection,
or credible news outlets confirming the incident. Fact checking quickly
revealed the video as an AI generated fiction and no
such incident occurred. The episode has seen as a cautionary

(01:07):
tale about misinformation created by AI. The Toensa story was
a modern version of a classic urban legend that has
circulated for decades. The story is a highly embellished version
of a true event in nineteen fifty nine a con
man named John Allen Coucher Zigris was arrested in Japan

(01:27):
with a forged passport from a non existent country, possibly
a misspelled to warrid. He was convicted of fraud and deported.
Another story says in July nineteen fifty four, a man
allegedly arrived at a Tokyo airport, claiming to be from
a country called Toward. When shown a map, he pointed

(01:47):
to the area of Andorra, insisting his country had existed
there for one thousand years. He was detained in a
hotel room with guards, but vanished the next morning without
a trace. Over time, the details of Zegrus's story were
exaggerated into a mysterious tale of a time traveler or
parallel universe visitor.