Sextortion: The Darkest Deepfake Scams, How to Protect Yourself and Laurie Segall's Hunt for “Mr. Deepfakes”

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3:15Today I'm joined by one of the bravest voices in tech journalism, Lori Siegel. And as you're about to hear, I've known her for about 100 years. But you know her, too. You've seen her on CNN at 60 Minutes. And if you've been following her reporting over the last few years, you've probably found yourself both captivated and terrified. Lori's latest work uncovers one of the darkest corners of the Internet, deep fakes, specifically the dangers of AI generated images of real people in fake sexual acts. In our conversation, she explains the common deep fake crimes and scams and how to protect yourself.

3:49We also talk about her totally insane investigation into Mr. Deepfakes, a man that she calls one of the most dangerous people online, and what happened when she actually tracked him down and confronted him. And finally, we talk about the bigger picture, what this means for women, for our democracy and the future of AI. Honestly, my takeaway, it's definitely still the Wild West.

4:14Lori Siegel! So happy to be here with you. I'm so happy to say welcome to Money Rehab. Thank you. We've known each other for 100 ,000 years. Correct. We worked together at CNN 50 ,000 years ago. Correct. But when I saw online that you were sextorted, first of all, I wanted to kill that person. Yeah. And then I was like, what is sextortion? And can I be sextorted? Yeah, the answer is, unfortunately, like any of us can, which is terrifying. That's like the reality of the world we're entering. So what is sextortion? This would be like if you're a child and someone reaches out on like Instagram and pretends to be your friend.

4:52And let's say you have a teenage boy. By the way, all this is going to seem really dark. So I just sorry. Let's say you feel like a teenage boy. Pretty girl reaches out, starts trying to get them to send some kind of a provocative image. And the next thing you know, they say, if you don't pay me X amount of money, I'm going to send this to every single person, you know. But your child never even took the image. Right. They were never even tricked into it. It's a deep fake of them. And it doesn't matter that it's not real because it looks real. And these types of like sextortion campaigns are so horrific and children are ending their lives.

5:24And this isn't just children. I say this is happening to adults. This has been an ongoing thing for a while. So what's happening with the rise of artificial intelligence and deepfakes is basically the democratization of these types of scams. And none of us are safe. Right. So someone could say, I have a nude image of you and I'm going to pass it around to everyone. And I always look at this from a victim standpoint. You can't just say, oh, it's just not me because you'll see that image. It looks like it. And it looks like you. To an untrained eye, it's you. It could tarnish your reputation. People might not know it's real.

5:53So these images aren't real, but the impact is real. So we always want to shout this from the mountaintops. This is what's coming. And we need tech companies to do a much better job. So let's talk about it. So somebody reached out to you. And then what happened? Apparently, this is a very common scam. And I just happen to know a lot of good guy hackers from my days going to hacker conferences as a tech journalist. So I was able to forward this and be like, what is happening? But someone reached out and said, I have images of you. I've been able to hack into your device. If you don't give me X amount of money, implying they had intimate images of me, I will put this out there.

6:26And what they do is I think they put some identifiable information about you, like your home address or something like that. You thought it was like you thought maybe somebody. For a second. And this is what happens. And I'm like a longtime tech journalist, right? Like I am like, I got this. Like, I don't have to freak out. And even me, I was like, oh, my God, do they have something? What do they have? And you start questioning. Your breath gets short. I literally had a security guy come onto my computer. I, like, had him remote into my computer and look for any malware. I wanted to be completely sure.

6:56And he was like, no, these scams are actually going around. So I posted about it. And the next thing you know, I get all these people messaging me privately, being like, this is happening to me. I was so scared. And one of the things they say, this is so, I love that we're really starting out strong on this. They'll be like, we saw you on a porn site or something, and now we've remoted in. People are embarrassed to talk about it. So it's just like a wild, I would say, like, it is a wild west right now. And there are so many of these different types of scams going around. Like, we are in the wild west of scams that are only made so much more believable by artificial intelligence, right?

7:31Like parents getting calls from what they believe are their children because their voice has been imitated using artificial intelligence because it takes 30 seconds of a voice sample to be able to mimic that voice. This is, I think, the world we're entering at all these different levels where our identities are up for grabs. And AI can just mimic our most intimate features, our face, our bodies, our voice. And so it's a bit of a Wild West. And I think we have a long way to go with educating people on it. For sure. My husband and I even had this conversation recently where we said we needed a safe word.

8:03Right. So if somebody gets called saying that they were kidnapped or I don't I can't even imagine. Yeah. We probably don't even know what could happen or will happen. Like say strawberry. That's not our safe word. But no, I say something like that. A hundred percent. Hilariously, we all need human passwords. This is literally what one of the top security guys said to me. I was like, how do people protect themselves? He's human passwords. Safe words. It's like I called my mom and I was like, if you get something like this from me, which it seems crazy to have to call our parents and say, like, if you hear an AI generated voice or you're not sure if it's me, this is the word you need to say.

8:38This is our human password. In an interesting way, it's almost like our humanity is the thing that we're hoping will help us pull through in this weird time. The analog way, I guess, in this brave new world. So then what happened? You brought in the security experts. You are used to tracking down the criminals and the scammers. So this was all kind of a precursor to we did a larger investigation that we've been working on. When I say like I get obsessed with topics like this is for better and for worse. And I think three years ago, I became obsessed with this idea. Someone had mentioned to me there was this really shady site online and it's a deep fake pornography site.

9:17So literally it looked like I mean, this is dark, but it's like you were watching sex tapes, essentially, of many women in the public. Even though they never made them, even though they never would ever consent to something like this. But you were looking at hyper-realistic deep fake pornography of if you are even kind of a public figure, there's a chance you were on this site. And I remember going to this being like, wait, this is insane. And then I started looking into it at the peak of it. 18 million people were going to this site on a monthly basis. So I'm like, none of these women consented to having their image and likeness used.

9:55And like you couldn't tell if it was real or fake, although like we know it's not real, but that harm is very real. And I just remember being like, why does this exist? Like, why are 18 million people allowed to go and see this? And these women have no control. And ironically, it was like a lot of women in power. Wasn't Taylor Swift? Yeah, Taylor Swift. There were so many people that were like their likeness was taken and used on the site. And this site, I became obsessed with it because I was like, OK, it's not just like about this shady site on the Internet. But it was a platform, right? So it's not like people just went and saw these horrific videos.

10:30They could also, like, create them or pay people to create them. And so, like, it became a whole platform and an ecosystem where the idea of sexually explicit deepfakes of saying, oh, I like that woman. I want her doing this with this person. I don't care what she says. I'm just going to use AI to make my dreams come true. Like, your wish is AI's command. That was what this site was. And it was called Mr. Deepfakes. And I remember they also had like training manuals. So it wasn't just about these public figures, these women. It was about training young men how to do this and take this into their schools or take this into their workplace.

11:05So you look on the message boards and it'd be like, oh, I want to do this to my sister-in-law. I love tech. I love artificial intelligence. I think it's going to do incredible things. But this is ground zero for what happens when it is misused and it's used as a weapon against women and girls and eventually all of us. Right. So I became very obsessed with Mr. Deepfakes and tracking him and took us all on an investigation that was very wild and never a dull moment. Spoiler alert, we found Mr. Deepfakes. Yay. Yes. It was probably a couple of years ago. And I'm like, we should just start talking about this on the Internet and explaining why people need to care about this shady site.

11:42So we said, OK, I believe this is one of the most dangerous men on the Internet, the person behind this. and we need to know his name before it's too late. Because why should this person who has harmed so many women be afforded anonymity? This site had been up and running for seven or eight years and he was anonymous. So you had no idea who was doing this. And I just thought, let's find him. Let's just try. On my team, we have like some incredible investigative journalists that came with me from my 60 Minutes days. One of my colleagues, Nicole, she could be an FBI agent if she wanted. She's wonderful.

12:13We started talking about it and we went out And I remember I started talking about it like a mom's conference and all these moms got behind us with this idea that this might be about this shady deep fake porn site. But actually, this is about the future of bullying. This is about what could happen in your schools with young men doing this to women thinking it's OK. Like this is normalizing a new type of abuse. And so I think a lot of people really resonated with that message. And I remember I was getting my nails done. And all of a sudden, I didn't even know I had another inbox on TikTok. But I was on TikTok looking at other inbox, which is like messages that sometimes they filter.

12:49And this security company, security legal company called Cedenti reached out. And a guy named Jordi was like, we have a tip. We believe we have found him. And so I'm like, OK, this feels I'm not sure if this is real, like 100 percent. But I'm like, obviously, we're vetting it. And we ended up like going on this. We got like a dossier that had, I want to say 17, 18, 19 different data points. I brought in another security firm. Like we all basically tracked down like via social media, via the names we were given. And there were so many connections because anytime you do something on the Internet, like you're just not hidden.

13:23This is what I have learned through all my years in investigative reporting. Like covering your traces is actually like very difficult and you will make mistakes. And like, you know, he made mistakes years ago. There was an 8chan post with him. Like an 8chan. It's like 4chan, but like this message board. where people put like crazy theories and memes and cultural things. And it's like a place where a lot of like, you know, internet lovers for better and for worse go and say some of the weirdest stuff and great stuff too, but it's a weird place. He had an 8chan post. We had him talking about a car, like a red Mitsubishi.

13:56We were able to track and we ended up in front of his parents' home with the red Mitsubishi. Like all sorts of crazy investigation went into it. And we tried to reach out to him many, many times. He wouldn't answer. He took down all his social media. We reached out to friends and family, and then finally we said, let's go. Let's try to find him and talk to him in person.

14:18Hold onto your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

14:30I found out he worked as a pharmacist in a hospital, like helping people. I found out that he was the man that had really helped create this site that enabled so much, I would say, digital abuse against women. Had a wife. He had a new baby. Like, he was really living a double life. And we showed up outside the hospital. We were able to call the floor he worked on, figure out exactly when his shift was starting. We were there the next day, and we confronted him. And so it's been a pretty wild journey just to say we shouldn't live in a world where this type of thing is enabled. And it's interesting because when we confronted him, I knew we would have 30 seconds.

15:10I knew that he wasn't going to want to speak to us. And I knew he would know exactly who I am because I'd been reaching out to him for months before. And he saw me and he just started walking incredibly quickly towards the door. And I just remember asking for comment. Legally, I want to ask for comment, right? We have all this evidence. I asked him, I said, I want to negotiate how someone who's a father and a son can create this type of thing that perpetuates this type of abuse. And as the doors were closing, I said, the harm is real. And did he say something? He wouldn't say a word. I've interviewed like some categorically sketchy folks in my career, but I was really shaken by how he looked at me.

15:45And that was just part of our investigation. We did so many things to be able to really fan out. And we presented our findings to lawmakers around the world, started talking about why this mattered. And I think when this happened to Taylor Swift, I want to say like January or something of 2024. and I hated this thought, but I thought maybe now people will pay attention. Like it's happened to one of the most powerful women in the world, which is horrific. And it shouldn't take this type of abuse happening to Taylor Swift for people and lawmakers to pay attention. But it did help, I would say, people be like, oh, this is the language behind it.

16:22This is why it's bad. And I think we were able to speed up our investigation. And so it's been never a dull moment. And then I got pregnant and had a child in the process. But did that change how you viewed this and bringing a child into this world? It's a really good question. I think when we were initially out, I was thinking about it because we just had Mother's Day and I was thinking about having a child. And I remember thinking like, if we are not careful, it's not just about the victims, right? We are going to train a whole new generation of abusers, of young men who grow up and think that I can nudify this girl from class in a couple clicks using artificial intelligence.

17:02And I think that actually was very much as I was thinking about wanting to have a child. Like, God, I remember not this is like probably way too much information. But like when we were in the hotel room the day before tracking him, I was literally tracking ovulation. Like I was like, it was so top of my mind of thinking what happens for our children? I just feel like we have to do better for them. And so it was wild. We went out there and a couple months later, I found out I was pregnant. And this felt so personal to me. I just don't want my child to grow up in a world where people think they can control women and girls.

17:39It spreads out. And we had a team of women in the field, which is pretty incredible. And the producer I was working with who worked on Mostly Human, which was my show at CNN, she was six months pregnant in the field. And we had this moment. She still wanted to come. I was like, are you sure you want to come? She's like, 100%. I'm like, okay. We're doing like car stakeouts and she's literally six months pregnant at the time. And I remember we had confronted him at the hospital and he left through another door. Like he was able to get out. He took some kind of car out because we were right near where he had parked.

18:09We didn't know his home address was. I remember feeling like a little bit of a dead end. We came all the way out here. We wanted to get some answers. We wanted to ask for some kind of comment and understanding of how you could have created this thing that became so big without any accountability. I'll never forget we were in the car and Roxy who's the producer I was working with she was like because we just figured out he was a dad because we had gone to his parents home and we saw a baby seat like a car seat in the car and I was like is Mr. Deepfakes a dad and she was like let's call a local toy store and see if he's registered like pregnant Roxy is saying this and I'm like oh that's actually probably not a bad idea and we ended up calling Mr.

18:49Deepfakes was registered at I guess for his child. And like, we were able to somehow get his home address from that, which was just this, it took like, I think a lot of women just in like the only way, like I feel like a pregnant person would think we're trying to figure out a better future for our children. And the reason I focus so heavily on Mr. Deepfakes, because it's not just about Mr. Deepfakes, it's about the future of consent and bullying and being able to like create a better world for our children. And I think that was really personal to me because I was thinking about having a child during this investigation.

19:20Then I got pregnant and then I had a child. It's been a wild journey, but it makes it, I think, really meaningful that the site is now down. As of the last couple of weeks, the site was down. And I would say it took probably part of it, us showing up at his door, other people beginning to understand who he was. It took people creating friction, Google deranking the site. So it took all this friction, but it was such a win because I think so many people sometimes say, oh, it's a game of whack-a-mole. It's what? You take one down, there's gonna be so many others. And I just don't buy it. Do you know how many women are going to sleep better tonight because of this?

19:56And if it's like a game of whack-a-mole, we just whacked like a giant one. So that makes me sleep better. Yes, me too. Do you know if he had a boy or girl? I don't know. It's messed up in both ways. I think he might have had a boy. And I'm not positive when we did a little investigating, which is just crazy to me. And I might sound like a total crazy person. I always try to understand the why, I think it's too simple to be like, you're just this terrible person and you've done this thing. I think it's actually in trying to understand the why, maybe the more interesting reasons. He reminded me a little bit of Ross Ulbrich from Silk Road, the guy who created one of the largest sites on the dark web where illegal things were bought and sold.

20:37Ross very much had this libertarian ethos of this is kind of the future of the internet and all these things. I can't speak for David. That's the name of one of the creators of Mr. Deepfakes, according to all of our evidence. I can't speak for the why, but I do think that it started as more of a hobby and an interest. Deepfakes and also porn and all this stuff. And I don't know if there was just a lack of empathy, if maybe he didn't believe that the harm was real. I think that those walls closed in on him. I think the stakes got higher as the site got bigger and as people started talking about it more and as more people started saying, this is really harmful.

21:15He never shut it down until a couple weeks ago when it was shut down. So I have no idea where he is now. Did he get fired? I don't know if they fired him. There was a report that he could potentially be overseas. I don't know. Does his wife know? I have... I had that question too. I mean, so I reached out to her after all of this happened and his name is out there and the site is down. She hasn't responded. I did at one point show up at his parents' home. It didn't feel like I always think it's important for not to feel like, oh, got you. I'm going to get the bad guy. It felt sad. We grew up in like a beautiful neighborhood where kids are playing on the street.

21:53I didn't get the sense his parents knew, but I don't know. You talked to them? Spoke to his father very briefly before he went inside. And I didn't want to, how do I say this? I didn't want to stay for too long and be harassing at all. There's always this fine line of asking. Between the reporters. Between, but I never wanted to be that. We've seen that just without any empathy. And I'm not saying like I need to have empathy for this, but I think like empathy is the thing that we lack. So many instances, it's the whole reason I think we're seeing a problem in sexually explicit deepfakes. People don't realize that there's real harm here.

22:27And so I - A person, a family. Yeah. I like to think that we showed up with a certain amount of empathy and being inquisitive without harassing his family. I think I walked away feeling really sad. How did it affect you? I think I get frustrated sometimes because it's like, I thought for so long, this is why it's so big, right? It starts here. Then it goes to schools. Then it goes to democracy where we can make anyone say anything. And then it goes to conspiracy. So I always like to be like, how do I frame this to different people? And I think sometimes it can get frustrating to be able to be like, no, it's not about the shady site.