But because I am a product marketing expert (albeit in biometrics, not monetization), I have improved on Gladbach’s inferior suggestions.
Rather than arranging for Robin Leach-inspired “rich and famous” Ferrari/Rolex photo shoots (Stefan’s first point) and laboriously writing up an expensive course (his second point), I assigned the tasks to AI. This offers the added benefit of satisfying Stefan’s third point, losing all morals.
So here is my course, thanks to Google Gemini. But don’t tell anyone that.
IAM. Invest in me—I mean invest in yourself.Read the fine print.
AI used for evil is bad, but it’s not the worst evil.
Neal K. Shah is victimized
Neal K. Shah self-identifies as “America’s Chief Elder Officer.” And he says that he recently made the news:
“FOX Business just published a story about me – I wish they didn’t have a reason to. Scammers used AI to clone my likeness, and turned it into a WEAPON against the exact people I work to protect – older adults and caregivers.”
According to Shah, the scammers used a Meta tool called Muse Image to create fraudulent deepfakes of Shah endorsing slimeball products. Because of this and other incidents, Meta concluded that Muse Image “missed the mark” and disabled the feature.
(For now. If Muse Image reappears in 2028, don’t be surprised.)
Shah, understandably upset that elderly people were misled, blames evil AI.
“BUT the deeper problem – how trivially easy AI now makes it to impersonate real people and prey on the vulnerable… I think that may only be getting started.”
The problems occur after the scam, and aren’t affected by how the scam was perpetrated. The problem is when a platform is scammed, but the platform—a website, a newspaper, whatever—doesn’t bother to correct the record and tell the truth.
When someone creates a fake profile using your name, face, and credentials, it is a fast track to reputational damage. But what happens when you hit that “report” button and the platform does absolutely nothing?
For a long time, platforms hid behind broad immunity shields, treating identity fraud like a minor nuisance. But in 2026, the regulatory tide is turning. Relying on passive content moderation is no longer cutting it. Between the FTC’s strict crackdown on impersonation and new federal mandates like the TAKE IT DOWN Act forcing rapid 48-hour responses for deepfakes, platforms that stay passive are looking at massive civil penalties.
When a platform ignores fraud, it isn’t just failing the victim; it’s tanking user trust. It is like hiring a pack of wild wildebeests as marketing consultants, only to wonder why your wombat customers are running away in terror.
If a platform leaves you stranded, you have to document everything, escalate to regulatory channels, and protect your broader digital footprint. Identity security requires proactive defense, not corporate silence. If you need a hand navigating this landscape, John E. Bredehoft at Bredemarket can help you map out a strategy.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Now I just have to convince people that I did NOT endorse a death of passwords book.
Oops, I did it again. Because LinkedIn employment fraud persists. Let’s see if the fraudsters have become smarter since November 2024.
As previously promised and as previously executed…
I’ve spent over 10 years in identity and biometrics, and other factors, including one-to-many identification, one-to-one verification, and classification (e.g. how old you are).
But as I have noted in an old article in the Bredemarket newsletter The Wildebeest Speaks, verifying someone’s identity only goes so far.
(For people reading this on LinkedIn: here comes #honeypot79, for those paying attention.)
For example, how many LinkedIn users sporting a green banner and an #opentowork hashtag have been approached by a person claiming to be from Company X…who is NOT from Company X?
That, my friends, is #employmentfraud – something that the REAL employees at all the Company X’s out there take very seriously.
Of course, no #fraudster who is doing something like that would be foolish enough to send me a LinkedIn InMail with such a claim…would they?
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
President George W. Bush.
Because when a cyberattack is successful, it often leaves a trail. You can analyze this trail after the fact, as IBM notes.
“AI-powered machine learning models trained on historical data may use pattern recognition to automatically catch and block possible fraudulent transactions from being executed….
“AI systems used in banking fraud prevention are highly tuned for specific tasks. AI models are trained using large amounts of carefully curated data through a process called supervised learning. This method teaches the model to recognize specific patterns for specific tasks.
“In contrast, unsupervised learning allows AI systems to draw conclusions from previous data without directed training materials.”
This continuous improvement of fraud detection models benefits us all.
If you’ve ever responded to a Request for Proposal for a technical product, you know that the RFP often has mandatory criteria. If you don’t meet all of the mandatory requirements, you’re not going to win.
Unless you do.
I am not going to name the vendor who submitted this proposal for two reasons:
The alleged corruption in this bid may not have affected the vendor in question, but the vendor’s in-country agents. And yes, I know you have to select your agents carefully, but sometimes it’s impossible for vendors to know what the agents are doing.
As the article indicates, the vendor in question was not the only one to receive corruption allegations. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Back to the bid, which was for an identity system in Nepal. At least two foreign companies bid on the system. The article describes the bid from one of those companies.
The technical sub-committee found that [THE VENDOR’S] bid for both packages failed to meet the required technical criteria. Specifically, in Package 1, [THE VENDOR] did not satisfy any of the 238 required technical specifications. In Package 2, the company fell short of 50 of 297 listed technical requirements.
Normally, if you meet exactly 0 out of 238 mandatory requirements, you don’t get an award.
Despite these findings, the evaluation committee overrode the technical sub-committee’s recommendations and allowed [THE VENDOR] to advance to the financial round. This directly contradicts Nepal’s Public Procurement Act, which mandates that only technically compliant bids may proceed. One member of the technical sub-committee withdrew his signature from the final evaluation report two weeks after it was submitted, indicating internal dissent within the department’s own review process.
The non-compliant vendor actually won the award…but there were a lot of questions. And action was subsequently taken.
The department’s latest procurement, a five-year contract worth approximately Rs 7.66 billion awarded to two…firms, triggered a prolonged legal and regulatory battle before culminating in the arrest of the department’s own director general on June 15, 2026.
Yes, arrest.
Specifically, of the Director General of the Department of Passports, Tirtha Raj Aryal, who also chaired the five-member evaluation committee that waived the technical non-compliance.
“Across the lending industry, a new category of fraud is emerging that combines deepfake video, cloned voices, synthetic identity creation, fabricated employment histories and AI-generated financial behavior into a single engineered persona. These synthetic borrowers are not merely fake identities in the traditional sense. They are algorithmically optimized consumers designed to survive onboarding checks, satisfy underwriting models and disappear once loans are funded.”
Disappearing borrowers is not a good thing.
Know your customer.
“Underwriting the Ghost.” Synthetic man gets the loan, then he disappears. Google Gemini/Lyria. Public Domain.
I simplified my social life a few months ago by no longer posting on Instagram. I don’t even have Instagram on my phone any more.
But Instagram Meta-relative Facebook is “nice” enough to inform me when I receive Instagam messages, as well as unsolicited Instagram message requests. Which I obvously can’t read on my phone (in part because I also removed Meta for Business).
Joining the “brand ambassador” inner circle
So one day when I happened to be on my laptop, I brought up my Instagram account. I wanted to see the latest message request, reportedly from “Navin Nandra”…even though I already knew it was in a languge using the Cyrillic alphabet. And probably wouldn’t bring Bredemarkeet a ton of business.
So here’s what I had to do:
Go from my phone to my laptop.
Log in to Instagram.
Find my message requests.
Translate the message request that I received.
After translating, I was right in guessing that this was a waste of time. Here is how the message began:
“Good day! This is the brand manager for the clothing brand PRIME Wear
“I’m messaging you from a tech/alternative account—we use these to avoid getting blocked by Instagram Direct limits.
“We absolutely love your style and the content on your blog!
We would love to invite you to join our inner circle of PRIME brand ambassadors.”
Um, no. These “we love your style” messages are always amusing to me. Especially when account number one tells you to contact account number two. Because reasons.
Google Gemini.
Yeah, “ambassador.” My last name isn’t Jenner, and my look isn’t Jenner either.
Google Gemini.
The underlying scams
So I asked Google Gemini about the scam behind these amazing offers, because I suspected a scam. To please me, Google Gemini said that there are scams related to this. I could have fact-checked this on a live web page, but I had already wasted too much time on this.
Here’s one of Gemini’s reported scams:
You are told you have been “hand-picked” to represent the brand. They offer to send you jewelry, sunglasses, or clothing for “free” so you can take photos with it.
The Catch: They give you a discount code that brings the item’s cost to $0, but you have to pay $10 to $15 for shipping.
The Reality: The brand is usually a front for a dropshipping operation. They buy the items from bulk wholesale sites for less than $1. Your “shipping fee” actually covers the cost of the item and gives the scammer a profit.
The Outcome: You paid full retail price (or more) for a low-quality, cheap item, while giving them free advertising.
Bad enough, but it could get a lot worse.
Some requests are much more malicious. A “talent scout” or “brand manager” will message you offering high-paying sponsorships ($500+ per post), even if you only have a few hundred followers.
The Catch: To “set up the partnership” or “verify your account,” they send you a link to a portal or ask for your 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication) code.
The Reality: The link leads to a fake Instagram login page designed to harvest your password. If you give them a 2FA code, they will immediately change the email associated with your account, lock you out, and hold your account hostage or use it to scam your friends.
So “Navin Nandra” is now blocked. And I can avoid Instagram again for a while.
Bredemarket 