All posts tagged: scammer

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men

This Scammer Used an AI-Generated MAGA Girl to Grift ‘Super Dumb’ Men

Published by skeptic

Like many medical school students, Sam was broke. The 22-year-old aspiring orthopedic surgeon from northern India got some money from his parents, but he says he spent most of it subsidizing his licensing exams, and he’s still saving up to hopefully emigrate to the US after graduation. So he started searching for ways to make additional money online. Sam, who requested a pseudonym to avoid jeopardizing his medical career and immigration status, tried a few things, with varying degrees of legitimacy and success. He made YouTube shorts and sold study notes to other med students. It wasn’t until he started scrolling through his Instagram feed that he landed on an idea: Why not make an AI-generated girl using Google Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro and sell bikini photos of her online? But when Sam started posting generic photos of a beautiful, scantily clad woman on Instagram, he was dismayed to find that none of the content was hitting. He turned to Gemini for advice. “If you create a generic ‘hot girl,’ you’re competing with a million …

Telegram Is Still Hosting a Sanctioned Billion Crypto Scammer Black Market

Telegram Is Still Hosting a Sanctioned $21 Billion Crypto Scammer Black Market

Published by skeptic

Xinbi Guarantee has also hosted a wide variety of other black market offerings, including harassment services that threaten or throw feces at a victim for a fee, and even sex workers as young as 14 who are likely trafficking victims. One listing Elliptic shared with WIRED, found just in recent weeks, offered a 16-year-old sex worker, including the girl’s body size measurements and available sex acts. As clearly as all of those examples contradict Telegram’s arguments for hosting Xinbi Guarantee, though, the UK government’s official sanctions against Xinbi are even more clearcut, says Elliptic’s Robinson. “It was already a weak argument, but the sanctioning of Xinbi makes the argument much weaker,” Robinson says. “There is now this official recognition that Xinbi is predominantly an illicit actor.” Telegram’s tolerance for Xinbi Guarantee is all the stranger because it did, in fact, ban the market at one point last year. After WIRED asked Telegram about Elliptic’s findings regarding Xinbi Guarantee and a then-even-larger market known as Huione Guarantee, Telegram summarily purged the accounts of both. Telegram spokesperson …

Watch: Convicted Minnesota Scammer Says Walz, Ellison Were Aware Of 0M Fraud

Watch: Convicted Minnesota Scammer Says Walz, Ellison Were Aware Of $250M Fraud

Published by Jenni Sidey

The media has been giving quite a lot of attention to Aimee Bock, the head of a Minnesota nonprofit at the center of the largest pandemic relief fraud in the nation’s history – which she now says Governor Tim Walz and AG Keith Ellison had to have known about. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing, June 12, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File) To review; Bock’s organization, Feeding Our Future, fraudulently signed off on $250 million in federal funds meant to feed underprivileged children in Minnesota roughly 125 million nonexistent meals. According to prosecutors, as little as 3% of the funds were actually used to feed children. Bock, 45, was charged with signing off on reimbursement claims for the unserved meals, as well as collecting bribes. She maintains her innocence, while one Somali community leader told a local reporter that Bock was “a modern-day Robin Hood.” Feeding Our Future was a “sponsoring organization,” meaning it approved meal sites, approved meal counts, and distributed the reimbursements to …

Bryant Simmons’s Frenemies Call Him a Scammer. He Says They’re Just Jealous.

Bryant Simmons’s Frenemies Call Him a Scammer. He Says They’re Just Jealous.

Published by Sam Flores

After a brief stint in Los Angeles, Simmons returned to New York, where, in January of 2023, according to the NYPD detective on the case, he “turned himself in” on the charges that had been brought against him by Buccini. In Simmons’s telling, however, “I went to the precinct…and I dealt with it with them,” he says, “and I actually left.” “What’s also crazy is that they reached out to me to come back and work there last year,” Simmons tells me—a claim Buccini denies. A screenshot she shared with Vanity Fair purports to show their last messages to each other: “Okay so now I’m out of a job lol,” he texted her on June 28, 2024. “Are you willing to just put the past behind [us] and let me come back?” She never responded. At the same time that he was working at Kirna Zabête, Simmons was living in a Gramercy apartment, where he also allegedly paid rent for only a couple months. A desperate sublessor agreed to a less formal agreement, but just …

Arizona scammer gets 87 months for .6M fraud paying for gambling and lifestyle

Arizona scammer gets 87 months for $5.6M fraud paying for gambling and lifestyle

Published by skeptic

An Arizona man has been sentenced to 87 months behind bars, followed by three years of supervised release, after scamming 54 individuals to pay for a gambling habit and lead a lavish lifestyle, according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office. Anthonie Ruinard, Jr, will also have to pay $4,508,057 in restitution to every victim in the case. Arizona Man Sentenced to More than Seven Years for Defrauding 54 Victims in Investment Fraud Schemehttps://t.co/K7L3VvnbBO pic.twitter.com/y8u92NCuE9 — FBI Phoenix (@FBIPhoenix) November 24, 2025 Ruinard was able to fraudulently scam 54 people out of roughly $5.6 million through an investment fraud scheme, which was under the guise of a business titled Legacy Investors Group Inc. The 40-year-old posed as a successful investor and promised those affected in the case a guaranteed return across investments in areas such as real estate and private equity. Some victims did receive money early on in the scheme to avoid suspicion, but Ruinard used excuses such as the ongoing war in Ukraine and an unprecedented market to keep the …