One thought he was getting to know “Eliza” and was robbed of his life savings. The other was trafficked to a scam compound, beaten and forced to become “Ella” online. Separated by thousands of miles, Chris Colocousis and Safeer Mohammed Koorimannil inhabited opposite sides of the global cyberscam industry.
An AP/“FRONTLINE” investigation has found that American technology is present all along the digital supply chains that connect people like Colocousis and Koorimannil. Most public scrutiny has focused on the social media platforms victims see. But the infrastructure exploited to commit fraud begins much farther upstream, from AI models baked into powerful new tools to optimize workflow and create more perfect fakes, to satellite dishes that enable scammers to evade internet crackdowns, to internet service providers that carry traffic from the lawless borderlands of Myanmar to the phones and computers of millions of victims.
