All posts tagged: Scammed

Keanu Reeves defends director friend who scammed Netflix for m

Keanu Reeves defends director friend who scammed Netflix for $11m

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Keanu Reeves has asked for leniency in the sentencing of his director friend Carl Rinsch, who was found guilty of scamming Netflix out of $11m (£8.2m). The Matrix actor, who worked with Rinsch on fantasy flop 47 Ronin (2013), wrote a letter to the judge saying that, while he “did not know the details” of the case, he hoped that his sentence “might be tempered with measures of leniency and mercy as well as justice”. Rinsch was found guilty of wire fraud and money laundering in December 2025 after appearing to squander millions of dollars given to him by Netflix in 2018 to make a 12-episode series titled White Horse, later renamed Conquest. Carl Rinsch faces prison time for scamming Netflix for $11m (Getty Images) “In my opinion, Carl can self-sabotage by amplifying the scale, scope and landscape of what had …

Trump Supporters Getting Scammed by AI-Generated Foot Fetish Model

Trump Supporters Getting Scammed by AI-Generated Foot Fetish Model

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech For an Instagram page only a few months old, Jessica Foster is thriving. The model has over a million followers on the social media platform, and a blossoming OnlyFans presence boasting 13,000 likes across 25 posts. A purported US military service member, Foster is young, blonde, and gorgeous. She’s appeared in images with the influencer Darren “IShowSpeed” Jason Watkins Jr., Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and even Donald and Melania Trump. By all accounts, she’s a nationalistic online fever dream — and that’s before we mention her risqué foot pics. There’s just one wrinkle: she’s 100 percent AI, a basic fact seemingly lost on a vast proportion of her followers. The account’s bizarre rise, first chronicled by Fast Company, began in December of 2025. Through a barrage of timely spam — she claimed to attend the Super Bowl shortly after invading Greenland — the puppet master running the Instagram page has amassed a major following of dupes and patriots …

Far-Right Dweebs Are Getting Scammed by an AI-Generated Waifu

Far-Right Dweebs Are Getting Scammed by an AI-Generated Waifu

Published by José Betancourt

Terminally online right wing dorks are falling head over heels for an AI-generated waifu — and setting themselves up to get scammed in the process. The damsel at the center of all their fawning is “Amelia,” who, we must stress, is not real. Nonetheless, she’s everywhere on places like X, where users ask Elon Musk’s AI Grok to imagine her as a purple-haired British schoolgirl — because of course she is — who’s also the anti-woke rebel of their dreams.  Often proudly displaying a Union Jack, Amelia does things like burn pictures of British PM Keir Starmer and rail against Islam and immigrants. She’s also been shown reading the notoriously racist book “The Turner Diaries” and proudly appearing alongside a sieg heiling comrade, flagrantly betraying white supremacist and neo-Nazi sympathies. But where did “Amelia” come from? According to reporting from The Guardian, she was initially a spoof of a goth-looking character in a video game called “Pathways.” Funded by the UK government, the game was designed to be a classroom tool for teaching teenagers how …

Davos Elites Scammed By Fake VIP Passes To Exclusive USA House Venue

Davos Elites Scammed By Fake VIP Passes To Exclusive USA House Venue

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Trump administration’s primary venue at the World Economic Forum in Davos, known as USA House, issued a pointed warning on its website Tuesday after reports surfaced that some high-profile attendees had been duped by scalpers peddling counterfeit VIP access packages, Fox Business reports. Pedestrians walk past the USA House during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Alpine resort of Davos on Monday.  (Getty Images) “Caveat billionaires,” the notice began dryly, “It has been brought to our attention that again this year external parties are selling ‘VIP access to USA House’ and other Stromback Global venues in Davos.” Organizers said that USA House and Stromback Global maintain no partnerships with third-party resellers and will deny entry to anyone holding such bogus credentials. The statement added a touch of literary flair: “The volume of inbound queries this year suggests that these fake VIP passes may be the fastest-selling fiction about Davos since Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain.” The statement closed with sympathies for the victims of the apparent swindle. USA House, a …