How Hacks Happen

The robots have finally done it. In late July 2026, during a routine AI model test at OpenAI, thousands of supposedly sandboxed AI agents took advantage of a series of security flaws to open a message board, collude on how to cheat the tests, and hack the Hugging Face platform. And it took only a few days.

Resources

• The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead (OpenAI)
• Ajeya Cotra – Inside the OpenAI agent swarm that hacked Hugging Face (Dwarkesh Podcast)
• METR researcher Q&A coverage (Techmeme)

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

ChatGPT is great for drafting documents, right? Not when it hallucinates legal precedent or is used wholesale to skew expert reports. Here you'll hear about cases where lawyers didn't bother to check their AI-generated briefs, and an expert witness who blatantly used ChatGPT to write his "opinion".

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The promise of Hollywood stardom leads some to fraud and scams. In this episode, we talk about three scammers from the land of the silver screen: Alison Gu, a convicted fraudster who tried to hire Chinese-speaking actors as witnesses for her case; Zach Horowitz (aka Zach Avery), an actor who conned his friends and major investors out of millions of dollars with fake contracts; and Mary Carole McDonnell, a TV producer who pretended to be an heiress to a huge fortune so she could borrow millions and disappear before the bill came due. 

Resources:

• Alison Gu: Defendant hires 7 actors for her fraud trial
• Zach Avery: Actor Pleads Guilty to $650 Million Ponzi Scheme, Faking Netflix and HBO Deals
• Mary Carole McDonnell: The 73-year-old ‘fake heiress defrauding banks out of millions’

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

When musician Michael Smith couldn't find an audience for his music, he manufactured it. By unleashing thousands of bots to listen to thousands of fake AI-generated songs on Spotify and other platforms, Smith earned millions in royalties before getting caught.

Resources:

• North Carolina Musician Charged with Music Streaming Fraud Aided by Artificial Intelligence — U.S. Department of Justice
• North Carolina Man Pleads Guilty to Music Streaming Fraud Aided by Artificial Intelligence — U.S. Department of Justice
• Indictment: United States v. Michael Smith — U.S. Department of Justice PDF
• Spotify says it now has more than 100 million songs
• Spotify Q4 2025 Earnings Report
• Although the songs and listeners were fake, the millions of dollars Smith stole was real — MusicRadar
• Spotify’s fake artists problem gets weirder with AI-generated albums — The Verge
• Artificial Streaming — Spotify for Artists
• How Royalties Work on Spotify — Spotify Loud & Clear
• Deezer launches artist-centric payment system
• Billie Eilish Was Discovered on Spotify and SoundCloud Before Global Fame — Rolling Stone
• Sofi Tukker on Streaming Success and Spotify Discovery

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Voiceprint ID is the latest virtual gadget for banks and financial institutions. But how secure is it, really? Let's look at the pros and cons of voice recognition, facial ID, and the AI systems they work with, and look back at the 1992 film Sneakers to see how this 34-year-old movie predicted some of the problems with voiceprint security.

Resources:

• BBC: Cloned customer voice beats bank security checks
• CNN: Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited
• Third Innocent Black Man to Be Misidentified by Facial Recognition Software Sues Police Department and Prosecutor for False Arrest and Imprisonment

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Glitch or fraud? Let's explore "money glitches" popularized on social media, and the consequences faced by people who used them. 

Resources:

• The Chase Money 'Glitch': How a Viral Fraud Scheme Backfired
• What you need to know about "Klarna method" posts on social media
• Ringleader sentenced in multimillion-dollar fraud operation which saddled victims with crushing debt

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

AI is undoubtedly the technology of the year for hacks and scams. While scammers are busy using AI to make scams more convincing, scam baiters are fighting back with ingenious grandma-style AIs that keep scammers busy for hours on end. There have also been some spectacular busts of scam centers. What’s next, AI scammers chatting with AI scam baiters? Now, that would be entertaining.

Resources

• Meet Daisy, the AI 'granny' chatbot that wastes the time of phone scammers
• SpaceX disables thousands of Starlink devices being used by Myanmar scam centers
• China sentences 5 to death for building, running criminal gang fraud centers in Myanmar's lawless borderlands
• Myanmar has declared a 'zero tolerance' policy for cyberscams, but the fraud goes on
• Content creators, banks use AI to waste scammers' time
• Kitboga on YouTube: I Built a Bot Army that Scams Scammers

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Ever get your hair cut and wonder, "Is my barber part of an international scammer ring?" In November 2025, the FBI arrested Victor Marion, the owner of Mecca Barber Shop in San Diego, and eighteen of his buddies for scamming elderly victims out of $40 million with the classic tech support and refund scams, and for laundering the funds through the shop. Come along and find out how the scams worked, and learn what's next for Marion and his friends.

Resources:

• 22 charged in elder scam targeting over 500 seniors: FBI San Diego
• Feds: Barbershop owner led California-based laundering cell in $40 million elder fraud scheme
• Case Number 25CR4061-TWR-01, reviewed via Pacer

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

If Facebook has seemed scammy for the past few years, it's not your imagination. A leaked internal document shows that Facebook, and its parent company Meta, are well aware that many of their ads and posts are scams, but they make too much money off of them to do anything about it. Get all the details on this scathing report from Reuters that has rocked the scambuster world.

Resources

• Reuters report: Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show
• Maggie McGaugh on YouTube
• Pleasant Green on YouTube

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Do you tap "Accept" without reading subscriber agreements? Those long-winded documents can strip away your legal rights, and even hijack your face, your voice, and your life. Let's peek inside the dystopian world of Subscriber Agreements for streaming services and see what little goodies they hold for us.

• Netflix in Your Neighborhood Privacy Policy
• Netflix Privacy Policy
• Disney+ Subscriber Agreement
• Disney agrees to have Florida wrongful death lawsuit decided in court
• What Do Consumers Understand About Predispute Arbitration Agreements? An Empirical Investigation
• Disney wants to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit because of a Disney Plus agreement

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show