The company blocked a coordinated network of accounts, most likely operating from the area of Poipet - a city linked to online scam compounds. The schemes: romance, investment, gambling and fake police. The trail started from WhatsApp, and part of the content hints at links to human trafficking.
- The network used ChatGPT for fake personas, translating messages to victims, and promotional content for the schemes.
- Some of the accounts handled admin work: internal messages, translations between staff, documents for recruitment, immigration status and discipline.
- OpenAI followed up on a tip from WhatsApp and has shared indicators with industry partners and authorities.
It wasn't the scams that stopped me in this report. The paperwork. The scam group used ChatGPT the way you'd use an office suite - internal messages, translations between staff, documents for hiring and discipline. The crime is organized like a company, and it keeps its own records.
There are two layers here, and the second is darker than the first. The first is technical: language used to be the natural barrier against these factories. A message in broken Bulgarian gives itself away from a mile off; a message run through a model doesn't. The second layer is human: OpenAI explicitly notes that the people writing the scams may themselves be victims - lured with a job promise and locked into debt. The factory scams outward, and inward.
If this sounds familiar: a stranger who quickly gets close and then brings up an investment; a 'profit' that first requires paying a fee; a 'police officer' collecting fines in chat. The plots have been the same for years. Only the spelling changed. A government institution doesn't collect money through a messaging app. That's it.