Swipe Right, Pay Up: Industrial-Scale AI Catfishing

Chris Cronbaugh

Romance scams used to take effort. AI changed the math.

We'll unpack an investigation into a fraudulent dating app network that abused AI to deceive victims at industrial scale, using real apps, on real app stores, targeting real people. We'll walk through how we found it, what it taught us about the anatomy of AI-enabled romance fraud, and what platforms, defenders, and model providers can do about it.

Come for the detection story. Stay for what the operators never meant for us to see.