Crime & Corruption Update #9
Deepfakes, AI training, and cyber scams
If you find this newsletter of value, click the ❤️ above to let the world know and help Substack’s algorithm show it to more people. 🙏🏻☀️Welcome to Edition #9 of perspicacity’s Crime & Corruption Update. This edition features revelations of the involvement of a Canadian pharmacist in the infamous deepfake pornography website MrDeepFakes, the global black market for AI training, and the Russian hackers tracking aid to Ukraine.
Also covered are the many victims of cyber scam operation centres in Southeast Asia, the abuses linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the gold and minerals revenue fuelling war in Sudan, and Germany’s designation of the right-wing AfD party as an extremist organisation.
perspicacity is committed to fact-based reporting that meets the highest standards of journalistic integrity. No content is AI-generated. To access the full stories summarised below, click on the headline.
CANADA
Unmasking MrDeepFakes: Canadian pharmacist linked to world’s most notorious deepfake porn site
Bellingcat, 7 May 2025
The website MrDeepFakes billed itself as the “largest and most user-friendly” platform for celebrity deepfake pornography. Visited millions of times every month, it hosted almost 70,000 explicit and sometimes violent videos that collectively had been viewed more than 2.2 billion times.
For years, the website has been shrouded in secrecy, existing in a legal grey area and concealing the identity of those who control it. Until now.
CHINA
Bulldozed: Identifying risk of exposure to illicit activity
C4ADS, 6 May 2025
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has long been plagued by accusations of corruption, fraud, environmental degradation, and labour exploitation. Analysis by C4ADS provides new insight into the Western financial institutions enabling this illicit activity and the BRI host nations it puts at risk.
Related:
Did coerced labour build your car?
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 31 May 2025
China’s economy runs on Uyghur forced labour
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 29 May 2025
Forced labour in Chinese cotton fields linked to supply chains of KFC and McDonald’s
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 30 May 2025
GERMANY
The AfD is a right-wing extremist group, German intelligence agency says
Politico, 2 May 2025
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has officially classified the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a “proven right-wing extremist organisation,” the most serious step yet in Berlin’s efforts to contain the rising political force. The agency says it has definitive evidence that the party works against Germany’s democratic system.
This is the first time in modern German history that a party with nationwide representation in parliament has been formally designated as extremist. Some state-level AfD branches had already received that label.
GLOBAL
Scams and shadow workers: A black market selling European accounts for AI training
Algorithm Watch, 22 May 2025
For an AI to converse with a human on any topic, it needs training data, such as texts or custom prompts from data workers. AI applications are sustained by hundreds of thousands of remote workers who perform manual training tasks for a few large companies.
Demand for trainers is so great that companies such as Silicon Valley-based Outlier hire workers globally and pay locally-adjusted wages, leading to a huge difference in pay rates between contractors.
To grow their workforce at speed, AI companies rely on streamlined automated processes for workers to create accounts on their platforms. This allows people in low-income countries to procure accounts associated with high-income countries. Fraudsters buy and sell such accounts on Facebook, with account owners and ‘taskers’ splitting the wage. Sometimes, account managers and taskers are attached to criminal networks.
The market has become a blueprint for criminal groups worldwide, and clients no longer know who is working on their projects. Outlier is part of a $13.8 billion data annotation and AI-training company called Scale AI, whose customers have included Accenture, SAP, Deloitte, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, as well as the White House and the US Army. Outlier itself does not reveal clients, but documents indicate that Google and Meta are among them.
RUSSIA
Russian hackers track aid routes to Ukraine
Bleeping Computer, 21 May 2025
A Russian state-sponsored cyber-espionage campaign has been targeting and compromising international organisations to disrupt aid efforts to Ukraine since 2022, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory from 21 intelligence and cybersecurity agencies in nearly a dozen countries.
The hackers targeted entities in the defence, transportation, IT services, air traffic and maritime sectors in the US and 12 European countries.
The hackers have also been tracking the movement of materials into Ukraine by compromising access to private cameras installed in key locations such as border crossings, military installations and railway stations.
Related:
Russian GRU targeting Western logistics entities and technology companies
Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, 21 May 2025
Russian foundation aimed at helping ‘compatriots’ abroad supports spies, criminals and propagandists
OCCRP, 21 May 2025
The ‘Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad,’ also known in Russia as Pravfond, started operating in 2012 with the stated goal of defending the rights of Russians abroad, primarily by offering assistance if they get into legal trouble.
Last year, a leak of several dozen documents revealed that Pravfond had ties to Russian intelligence and had helped pay for the legal defence of notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Now, an archive of nearly 50,000 emails from Pravfond exposes the inner workings of a foundation used by the Russian government to defend spies, maintain networks of influence and fund propaganda.
Related:
Russian state-backed foundation paid allies in the EU despite sanctions
OCCRP, 21 May 2025
RUSSIA & IRAN
Airborne axis: Inside the deal that brought Iranian drone production to Russia
C4ADS, 29 May 2025
Iran and Russia are deepening their political and military relationship through intermediary companies that facilitate their defence collaborations and flout global sanctions regimes.
This report examines Iran’s role in developing Russian production capability in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), which Russia is using to wage its war in Ukraine.
Related:
Who is making Russia's drones? The migrant women exploited for Russia's war economy
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 8 May 2025
SIERRA LEONE
After Sierra Leone's president took office, his wife and her family went real estate shopping
OCCRP, 10 May 2025
Since becoming Sierra Leone’s first lady, Fatima Bio has bought four properties in Gambia, while a $500,000 villa was purchased in her mother’s name.
Fatima Bio’s half-brothers have also purchased Gambian properties, bringing the relatives’ spending to a total of at least $2.1 million on at least 10 real estate transactions carried out between 2020 and 2024.
Tax records, employment history, asset ownership records, and other publicly available information suggest that Fatima Bio, her mother, and her half-brothers had modest means prior to her becoming first lady.
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Compound crime: Cyber scam operations in Southeast Asia
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 29 May 2025
Cyber scam operations have surged across Southeast Asia since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, evolving into a transnational organised crime crisis of staggering proportions.
Repurposed hotels, casinos, and private compounds across Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines have become centres of global fraud. These compounds are operated by organised criminal networks that exploit hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are trafficked and forced to perpetrate online scams.
Victims include not only those defrauded online but also the scam workers themselves, subjected to threats, violence, sexual exploitation and extreme working conditions.
Related:
UN OHCHR, 21 May 2025
SUDAN
Bullion for bullets: The role of mining in Sudan’s conflict economy
C4ADS, 27 May 2025
As conflict rages in Sudan, new C4ADS analysis shows that both the Sudan Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces are funding their operations with revenue derived from gold and mineral production. The analysis maps a new network of entities that remain wholly untouched by current sanctions.
Also worth exploring…
GLOBAL Rising demand for minerals heightening risks of crime, corruption and instability
UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 20 May 2025
SERBIA Suspicious tenders and spying on journalists: a small Serbian town in the grip of corruption
Forbidden Stories, 14 May 2025
SERBIA Pricey private school tuition for Serbian official’s children was paid through offshore companies
OCCRP, 6 May 2025
SOUTHEAST ASIA Rise in production and trafficking of synthetic drugs from the Golden Triangle
UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 28 May 2025
UNITED KINGDOM HMRC takes action against notorious tax avoidance specialist
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 19 May 2025
UNITED STATES How a Pentagon contractor built a global empire — and a massive tax evasion scheme
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 23 May 2025