A novel scam powered by artificial intelligence is making waves, but it’s far from convincing for those who scrutinize it. I recently received a menacing email claiming to be a “DMCA Copyright Infringement Notice” from a supposed law firm. The firm alleged that a Cointelegraph article had used a copyrighted stock image owned by a vague cryptocurrency company. However, upon inspection, it became apparent that the image in question was not even present in the article. To my surprise, the “law firm” sent a second email with the same threats and reused image, but this time on behalf of a different and equally mysterious AI-backed crypto platform.
The scammer behind this scheme demanded that Cointelegraph link to their website, a practice known as “backlinking” that Google rewards with improved search result rankings. It seems the perpetrators are attempting to deceive busy news editors into providing links to their fraudulent website. The threat came from an individual named “Alicia Weber,” who claimed to work for “Nationwide Legal Services.” Weber gave me a five-day ultimatum to include a link to her website, threatening a copyright lawsuit otherwise. However, a closer look revealed that the “law firm” uses a .site domain, which immediately raised suspicions.
It was clear that something was amiss and that this was a new kind of scam. Weber insisted that merely removing the image would not resolve the issue, despite the fact that, legally speaking, it typically would. She demanded that I include a link to the “notable entity” and “prominent organization” she specified. Intrigued, I decided to investigate further, and it quickly became evident that Weber was not a real person.
The headshots of the supposed lawyers from Nationwide had an eerie, uncanny resemblance to AI-generated images and deep fakes. As someone familiar with the crypto industry, I spend a significant amount of time examining AI images and deep fakes, making it easy to recognize the hallmarks of artificiality in this case. The corporate headshots of the enigmatic crypto firm’s “dream team” possessed unmistakable AI-generated traits, with an ethereal glow and glossed-over eyes.
In contrast, the other fake firm was upfront about their fictitious nature. Their website’s team page explicitly states, “Our AI Generated Cyborg Team.”
Both websites feature a substantial amount of obviously AI-generated content and have a somewhat professional appearance. If you were a busy, concerned digital news site administrator without sufficient knowledge, you could be forgiven for posting a backlink after a cursory examination, just to avoid a potential lawsuit.
The irony of an AI-generated threat over a copyright matter should not be overlooked. The AI industry arguably faces more copyright infringement lawsuits than actual AI models.
This scam represents a significant departure from the relatively lazy phishing scams that have plagued platforms like Twitter, where bots post obvious links to Google forms in the hopes of collecting seed phrases. The scammer behind this scheme has embarked on an arduous and time-consuming process with seemingly little reward. Generating so much content through ChatGPT and image generators requires countless hours before any real work can begin.
So, what is the purpose of this scam? Neither website allows users to connect a crypto wallet, ruling out a wallet-approval crypto-draining scam. One possibility is that the scammers are harvesting emails and passwords when users sign up for their “services.” They may test these credentials on other websites, hoping that users have reused them, or attempt a phishing scam using the newly acquired email addresses.
Curious to delve deeper into the con, I entered an email into both websites. So far, nothing has happened. It seems they went through all the effort of targeting potential victims but failed to execute their scam fully.
What was the point of all this? Perhaps one day, we will find out.