Love, investments and slavery: the circle of digital frauds | Opinion

Now it is possible to browse from end to end on social networks like Facebook or X without encountering a single truth. Artificial intelligence has taken over domains and, used in the worst possible way, has transformed the epicenters of global connection into a minefield of falsehoods that are increasingly difficult not to step on. Catherine came across one of these mines in early 2024 and is still recovering from the damage. As the newspaper reports Le Monde This 44-year-old Parisian, who uses a fictitious name, married a Ukrainian soldier with whom she exchanged video messages for months. From the war front, the soldier asked Catherine for help covering expenses such as a bulletproof vest or surgery. More than 17,000 euros left her bank account before she knew that the man speaking lovingly to her in those videos had been AI-generated from a photo of a Belarusian citizen. Catherine’s money and feelings did not fly to the heart of Europe but to Nigeria, a country that hosts one of the multinationals of the so-called “love scams”, whose increasingly sophisticated methods and areas of action continue to multiply.

While deciding whether you are intelligent enough not to fall like Catherine into the trap of a video of a human being expertly generated with artificial intelligence, Interpol tries to contain the enormous global business that now represents the love manipulation industry, known in technical jargon as “baiting the pig”, that is, feeding persuasive messages to the victim until they gain their trust, the raw material of the scam. You have to fatten the illusion before you sacrifice it. Nigerian Ikechukwu Ndubuisi, leader of one of Africa’s romance scam networks with thousands of victims worldwide, knows a lot about all this. As reported by Interpol from its

Love scams continue to grow and are already among the most harmful in terms of amount, especially among the elderly, even if the fastest growth and the largest overall volume of revenue are currently concentrated in investment scams, the advertising of which we now see on all platforms. The two frauds, the sentimental one and the financial one, are no longer distinguishable. The new scams mix seduction and cryptocurrencies as tools. They first generate the bond of trust and then the investment. The result is devastating for the victims who suffer double humiliation: emotional and economic. Another sordid and lesser-known deception bears the brunt of this lucrative industry. We need to locate in places like Cambodia, Myanmar or Laos, where criminal networks seduce young people with the promise of high-paying jobs in the tech sector. When they are transferred to fraud factories, the reality is different: forced labor, physical torture and deprivation of liberty. The assembly lines of romance scams and financial investments need new slaves.

Labor exploitation hides behind the barrage of advertising with fraudulent investments that social networks place on our cell phones. An internal Meta report cited by Reuters reveals that the company made 10% of its revenue in 2024 thanks to these “high-risk” ads. It would appear that technology not only facilitates fraud, but that platforms seem to make it profitable without putting much belief into ending this vicious cycle.