This ‘Frontline’ investigation highlights the rise of the multibillion-dollar criminal industry that uses digital tactics to extort and steal from people.
By John Anderson (thanks to Charlotte Lin)
Portrait of a man who was targeted by a scammer that stole $800,000 from his retirement savings, and a screenshot of a text message exchange with his scammer. AP/David Goldman
A book never picked your pocket. An analog LP never cleaned out your bank account. The Mona Lisa never asked you to invest in crypto. Anything much more technologically advanced, according to the documentary “Scammed,” and you’ve opened yourself up to fraud and heartbreak.
The result of an extensive investigation by “Frontline” and the Associated Press, “Scammed” is a multi-pronged exposé—a horror story in progress, a cautionary tale, and the kind of news you can use. Taking the canny narrative tack of starting small and going global, the story moves from the local and anecdotal into “a worldwide criminal industry stealing billions of dollars a year.”
In 2022, Gavin Guffey, a 17-year-old living in Rock Hill, S.C., was texting someone with the handle Bellajannet28. The conversation grew intimate, an inappropriate photo was sent by Gavin, and Bella Jannet’s tone suddenly changed: Send money, or the pic would go to everyone he knew. He sent $25, saying it was all he had. (“That amount is too small and we have no other choice but to ruin your life.”) A short time later, Gavin took a gun into the family bathroom and shot himself in the head.
A tragedy, certainly, and one in which some action has been taken. But as the program makes clear, millions are scammed each year by an ad hoc industry devoted to separating unwitting internet users from their money. The “Nigerian prince” con game—in which the alleged African royal just needs some advance money to free up his vast fortune (which the victim will, naturally, share)—has become small change compared to the expansive networks of scam artists employed in Cambodia, Myanmar and, yes, Nigeria. (It was, in fact, a Nigerian man who was extradited last year to the U.S. in connection with the Guffey death.)
“These individuals have industrialized fraud,” says Ari Redbord, formerly of the U.S. Treasury Department and now head of legal and government affairs at TRM Labs, which consults on financial crimes. By “individuals,” he doesn’t mean the people trafficked by the thousands into jungle compounds in Myanmar, for example, to perpetrate online swindles. He means the people in the shadows who are overlooked or even protected by certain nations; the social-media companies averse to policing their own traffic; or Elon Musk’s Starlink, which the “Frontline” installment claims is a principal if passive enabler of scams from remote and otherwise service-free South Asian locales.
The onscreen interviews conducted by the reporters involved—including Martha Mendoza of “Frontline” and the AP’s Erika Kinetz—are gently probing. Concealing her own reactions, Ms. Kinetz questions a Nigerian teenager and veteran scam artist, Ayomide, about the processes involved in the operations, the scripts, and the vast amount of information they have on potential victims. Ayomide seems surprised at the number of deaths that have resulted from his kind of crime. “I feel bad,” he says. “But, as a man, you have to make money.” The Third World vs. First World nature of “Scammed” won’t be lost on any First Worlders.
With any luck, the show’s reporting will alert the general public to how vulnerable it is. The methods of scam operations are sophisticated and little help can be expected by victims—from governments, financial institutions or Silicon Valley to correct the wrongs with which they’ve been complicit. As several experts emphasize, the scam epidemic will only be exacerbated by artificial intelligence. “Scammed” doesn’t pass judgment on the people who’ve been scammed—it’s evident that they’re hard enough on themselves, though some of the braver souls submit to telling their stories. At one point, I thought that they’d be revealed as computer generated, just to demonstrate tech’s capacity for deceit. But genuine guilt and shame may still be outside AI’s purview.
Scammed
Tuesday, 9 p.m., PBS