A Louisiana dad spoke out after explicit deepfake images of his 13-year-old daughter and others were allegedly shared, saying, “It’s disturbing. Those pictures are horrible. They’re extremely explicit, and they look real. You cannot tell the difference.”
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who was arrested in France last year, has just claimed that French authorities asked him to censor certain Moldovan voices on the platform. This censorship would have been carried out during a time of parliamentary voting, had Durov complied with the demands.
The entrepreneur claims that French authorities told him that they would make his time in court easier if he did what they asked. To be precise, Durov was apparently told that the French intelligence would “say good things” about him to the judge. Durov says that he refused to take up the authorities on their offer, as it was “unacceptable”.
The French foreign ministry took to social media platform X to state that Durov had made similar accusations against France in the past. Durov previously claimed earlier this year that the French foreign intelligence agency had asked him to ban conservative voices on Telegram during election season in Romania.
These elections were being held after the Romanian courts invalidated the 2024 elections, where right-wing populist Călin Georgescu unexpectedly won. The courts claimed that Călin Georgescu’s campaign involved Russian interference.
Telegram is extremely popular in countries with censorship. | Image credit — PhoneArena
If Durov’s claims are true, then he just gave up an easy ticket out of trouble by sticking to his principles. Telegram has long remained a very popular platform in countries where governments censor outside news, or certain beliefs. Durov’s accusations also expose a deeply unsettling side of the French government, if any of it is true.
The French authorities have accused Durov of facilitating criminal activities on the platform, something that the entrepreneur has adamantly called a ridiculous allegation. After Durov’s arrest, Telegram skyrocketed in popularity, as hordes of people downloaded the app in a show of support for free speech and the founder’s commitment to freedom.
Personally, I don’t really agree with the accusations lobbied against Pavel Durov. Telegram is simply an encrypted messaging platform, and the founder of the app has no say about what people do in their group chats. These same accusations could just as easily be made against Discord, or private communities on Reddit.
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Here’s another disturbing story about a customer of one of the Big 3 wireless providers in the U.S. who might have been ripped off. The latest scam involves an AT&T rep who allegedly ripped off a customer. The whole thing started a month and a half ago when a gentleman went to an AT&T Authorized Retailer seeking to purchase a new phone. He was looking to escape the “walled gardens” of iOS for the customization offered to users sporting an Android handset. The store did not have the phone he wanted in stock, so it was shipped to his home. But that is when the problem began.
After heart surgery, an AT&T customer is stunned when he receives a $900 bill
After going through a successful triple bypass, he receives a $900 bill from AT&T. Nine out of 10 Cardiologists would probably prefer that a patient who recently had a triple bypass or any other kind of heart surgery not have to face a $900 wireless bill while recovering. The customer claims that the bill showed that he added a new line, a new iPhone, and the Android phone that was shipped to his home. The problem is, he only ordered the Android phone.
This type of situation has become so common, and many will say that it is more common with third-party owned and operated stores. Anyway, the customer returned to the AT&T Authorized Retailer’s store, and was told by the same saleswoman who helped him the first time that he, the customer, had walked out of the store with the Apple iPhone without paying for it. Have you ever tried to exit a corporate or a third-party store with a phone you didn’t pay for? It is quite a difficult feat to pull off.
The customer argued that he only ordered the Android phone, not an additional iPhone, nor a new line. After some more complaining, the iPhone that the AT&T Authorized Retailer accused the customer of walking through the front door with was discovered right inside the store! The saleswoman told the customer that they were going to ship the iPhone back to AT&T and everything will then be copacetic. Of course, she didn’t mention the line the customer didn’t pay for.
The female rep handed over to the customer/victim a tracking number but not a receipt. He called AT&T numerous times to see if it received the iPhone from the store, and the answer was always “no.” When the customer looked up the tracking number, it showed that the package containing the iPhone was in Fort Worth, Texas and was there for over three weeks and was not received by AT&T.
How to reduce the odds of getting ripped off
It certainly feels as though the rep was trying to pull off a scam, so here is some advice. While company-owned and operated stores are not above pulling off some shady stuff, you might save yourself a headache by sticking to Corporate-run stores. Also, whenever you get a tracking number for a device or accessory that a store is shipping on your behalf, make sure to get a receipt.
The problem is that scams like these are not addressed by the carriers, and in many cases, the carriers cause these issues in the first place by demanding that their reps reach certain performance goals each month.
We’ve reached out to AT&T for a comment. If we get a response, we will update this story. We will also update this article if we hear anything new about it.
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A fintech startup that raised $40 million based on the premise of its artificial intelligence capabilities was fueled by human labor, allegedly defrauding investors lured by the new technology of millions, federal prosecutors said this week in a statement.
Albert Saniger, 35, the former CEO and founder of nate in 2018, who is from Barcelona, Spain, was indicted in the Southern District of New York for engaging in a scheme to allegedly defraud investors and making false statements about his company’s AI capabilities.
Nate, an e-commerce company, launched the nate app that claimed to streamline the online shopping checkout process via a single AI-powered tap option. But the app was not powered by advanced AI technology at all, according to the indictment.
With the promise of custom-built “deep learning models” that would allow the app to directly purchase goods on product pages in fewer than three seconds, Saniger raised over $40 million. While instructing employees to keep nate’s reliance on overseas workers secret, he pitched investors an AI-driven product capable of 10,000 daily transactions.
Instead, the app allegedly relied heavily on overseas workers in two different countries who manually processed transactions, mimicking what users believed was being done by automation. Saniger, meanwhile, allegedly told investors and the public that the transactions were being completed by AI.
“Saniger allegedly abused the integrity associated with his former position as the CEO to perpetuate a scheme filled with smoke and mirrors,” the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
In the technology’s absence, Saniger allegedly relied heavily on hundreds of workers at a call center in the Philippines, court documents said. When a deadly tropical storm struck the country in October 2021, the indictment said, nate established a new call center in Romania to handle the backlog of customer services. Investors were likely never exposed to the lull in transactions because Saniger directed that transactions by investors be prioritized to avoid suspicion.
The aftermath of the company’s fallout in 2023, left investors with near-total losses, the indictment said.
U.S. private AI investment grew to $109.1 billion last year — and the U.N. trade and development arm said market share is poised to climb to $4.8 trillion by 2033.
AI is widely perceived as being free from human intervention but the reality paints a more complicated picture. Nate is not the only company that has capitalized on AI through cheap labor overseas.
In 2023, The Washington Post exposed ‘digital sweatshops’ in the Philippines where employees worked on content to refine American AI models for a company called Scale AI, which multinational technology conglomerates like Meta, Microsoft and OpenAi utilize.
CBS News reached out to the U.S. attorney’s office and Saniger for comment.
Lauren Fichten
Lauren Fichten is an associate producer at CBS News.
