Searching for Mr. Deepfakes: The Tip [Part 2]

Summary

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Mostly Human with Laurie Segall

Episode: Searching for Mr. Deepfakes: The Tip [Part 2]

Original Air Date: June 18, 2026
Host: Laurie Segall
Podcast Description: Laurie Segall, award-winning tech journalist, investigates the human stories behind headline-making technologies. This episode continues her in-depth pursuit to unmask the person running the world’s largest deepfake porn site, “Mr. Deepfakes,” while exploring the real-life consequences of AI-generated abuse.

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Episode Theme & Purpose

This episode (Part 2 in a four-part series) picks up as Laurie Segall’s investigation into “Mr. Deepfakes” suddenly collides with breaking news: high-profile women—including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—are being targeted with viral deepfake porn. As Laurie's team chases a promising lead from a Dutch cybersecurity investigator, they confront the spread of digital abuse, the challenges of investigating a shadowy perpetrator, and the devastating ripple effects on ordinary people.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Breaking News: Deepfake Abuse Goes Mainstream

• Laurie’s Dilemma as News Breaks:
  • April 2024: AOC becomes a victim of explicit AI-generated images spreading on X (formerly Twitter), paralleling earlier incidents with Taylor Swift.
  • Laurie is asked on CNN to discuss the threat, but struggles with how much detail to share without increasing harm or driving traffic to these sites.
  • “It’s going to start happening like at a rate that we can’t even keep up with. This is the rate of technology now.” (03:05 - Laurie Segall)
• Balance in Reporting:
  • Laurie and her team decide not to name “Mr. Deepfakes” on-air to avoid encouraging further abuse.
  • The group reflects on the difficulty in discussing the issue without inadvertently informing or motivating abusers.

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The Tip: Unmasking Mr. Deepfakes

• The Investigation Begins:
  • Laurie receives a tip via TikTok from Jordy, a Dutch cybersecurity investigator and owner of the company Sidenti. His company had been helping OnlyFans creators and influencers facing AI identity theft, which drew him to the Mr. Deepfakes case.
  • “What he is doing is absolutely wrong... Using somebody’s image, using somebody’s face should always and always be only with the permission of the person.” (11:19 - Jordy)
• Digital Sleuthing:
  • Jordy's team traces digital breadcrumbs—starting from a 2018 8chan post advertising the site, to username analysis (“aznrico”), email connections, and public online profiles.
    • They discover the real-world identity behind Mr. Deepfakes, exposing the site creator as “David,” a man living in Toronto, Canada, active in photography and car communities.
  • “It would be difficult for him to explain it any other way.” (14:50 - Laurie Segall)
  • Jordy’s team accomplishes this in just 48 hours.

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Human Impact: Deepfake Abuse in Everyday Life

• Case Study - Molly & Steve (Minnesota):
  • Personal Betrayal: Ben, a close friend, is discovered to have created AI porn using images of Molly, Steve’s pregnant wife, and other female friends.
  • Ripple Effect: The abuse destroyed friendships, shattered community trust, and led to lasting anxiety.
  • “Ben was my husband’s best friend for the past twenty years...his wife found...a ton of pornography of me and basically all of our closest friends.” (26:15 - Molly)
  • Legal Barriers:
    • Molly, studying law, finds that law enforcement is unable (and in some cases unwilling) to act due to gaps in the law—particularly because criminal charges often require proof of dissemination.
    • Molly is forced to search the darkest corners of the internet for her own deepfakes:
      • “Now I am scouring the creepiest, weirdest corners of the internet, trying to find my own pornography.” (30:36 - Molly)
  • Ongoing Trauma:
    • The anxiety shapes her day-to-day life:
      • “Now I’m going to spend the next twenty-five years of my life reacting to this.” (29:06 - Molly)
      • “It’s like a spider you can’t find.” (31:36 - Molly)

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Pursuit in Toronto: Closing In

• Vetting the Dossier:
  • Laurie’s team corroborates Jordy's findings with U.S. cybersecurity expert David Kennedy, who expresses high confidence they’ve found the right person.
    • “It’s about as good as you’re going to get without the person actually admitting that he is Mr. Deepfakes.” (38:52 - David Kennedy)
• On the Ground:
  • Laurie travels to Toronto, tracking down multiple addresses, using facial recognition, and finding both family members and yearbook entries.
  • She attempts personal outreach to “David,” calls and messages him, and interacts—awkwardly and respectfully—with his parents at their suburban home.
  • “When you think about searching for Mr. Deepfakes, you think about going to an underground place full of like hackers with hoodies—you don’t think about going to a family-oriented neighborhood.” (45:33 - Laurie)
  • Evidence suggests "David" may also be a father, challenging simplistic ideas of the "villain behind the screen".

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Ethical & Emotional Aftermath

• The Accountability Paradox:
  • Laurie and friend Roxy reflect on the heartbreak inherent to accountability, and the complexity of confronting someone whose online actions have devastating real-world consequences.
  • “A big part of accountability is heartbreak...you forget that.” (49:59 - Laurie)
• Wider Danger:
  • The episode closes with a warning: deepfakes don’t just create new victims, but also new abusers—sometimes ordinary people, or even the next generation.
  • “My biggest fear was that we weren’t just gonna create new victims but we would create new villains who don’t look like villains.” (50:55 - Laurie)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Tech-Victim Paradox:
  • “There are apps that encourage young men to digitally undress their classmates with generative AI...we’re just scratching the surface on this.” (05:37 - Laurie)
• On Trauma:
  • “It’s the sword of Damocles over your head for the rest of my life.” (30:36 - Molly)
• On Discovery:
  • “Jordi agreed to send me his entire dossier...his research was very compelling, but we needed to vet it thoroughly.” (19:49 - Laurie)
• On Encountering Family:
  • “[I] feel shitty...to kind of go and confront a family about this and then I have to grapple...but doesn’t it feel shitty to the thousands of women who are being exposed on this site.” (45:33 - Laurie)
• On Unmasking:
  • “Here is Mr. Deepfake. This is David. He likes photography, makes different photos, and travels.” (18:05 - Jordi)
• On Anxiety and Reality:
  • “Very boring mundane things are very anxiety inducing now...you start to wonder where is it, it’s like a spider you can’t find.” (31:36 - Molly)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:21 – Content warning and context: sexual abuse and deepfake attacks on women.
• 03:03 – News hits: AOC targeted, Laurie on CNN, public awakening.
• 07:58 – The tipster Jordy: How he found Laurie and why he cares.
• 12:17 – Investigative methodology: Tracing digital breadcrumbs, usernames, and emails.
• 14:43 – The smoking gun: Email and username connected to site creator.
• 19:08 – Evidence of identity and the search leads to Toronto, Canada.
• 25:48 – Molly & Steve’s story: Community betrayal, the spread of deepfake abuse into ordinary lives.
• 29:44 – Legal hurdles: Molly’s efforts to seek recourse and the limits of law enforcement.
• 38:52 – U.S. cybersecurity expert confirms Jordy’s findings.
• 40:23 – Dutch journalist Sebastian describes the impact in the Netherlands and motivation to unmask Mr. Deepfakes.
• 45:29 – Laurie confronts David’s family, expresses the ethical and emotional toll.
• 47:58 – Laurie seeks leads at pharmacy, library, and among possible associates.
• 49:50 – Reflecting on heartbreak and ambiguity in accountability.
• 51:43 – Teaser: Next episode promises a stakeout with hopes of directly confronting Mr. Deepfakes.

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Summary

This episode vividly chronicles Laurie Segall’s investigation into one of the internet’s most notorious figures—focusing not just on the technical sleuthing that unmasked the person behind Mr. Deepfakes, but on the emotional and social wreckage left in this technology’s wake. By weaving in the firsthand stories of ordinary victims like Molly, and bearing witness to the pain and complexity of her own encounters, Laurie underscores the human cost of AI abuse and the moral questions facing our rapidly changing digital society.

Next up: Laurie draws even closer to confronting “David”—the alleged Mr. Deepfakes—while the ripple effects of digital harm continue to spread.

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If you’ve been targeted by sexually explicit deepfakes, resources are available at beyondmrdeepfakes.com.

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Transcript

[Lori Siegel]

this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human

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[Ben Nadifray]

ago an island off manhattan almost brought down new york city who will you

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

trust your friends and neighbors or you trust the people five miles overseas this

[Ben Nadifray]

is a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough but

[Molly]

we're not stopping are we

[Ben Nadifray]

listen to revisionist history the staten island problem on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Rebecca Nagle]

one hundred fifty

[Lori Siegel]

years ago they were hunting us down to kill us and now they're hunting down immigrants to deport them this is

[Rebecca Nagle]

first america the true story of how the united states came to be and how we got to this present moment listen to first america on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Mangesha Tigadar]

i'm mangesha tigadar and i'm back with a new season of my podcast skyline drive this time i talk to scientists biopunks curmudgeons blue zoners super seniors and goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us and i get into a bit of trouble along the way i'd

[Molly]

say probably start bone smashing that doesn't work to make it look more defined they say it works i don't know

[Mangesha Tigadar]

listen to skyline drive how to live forever on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i've

[Drilled Podcast Host]

been hearing for decades that the markets can solve climate change today we have more incentives for market solutions than ever and emissions are rising on this season of drilled carbon cowboys the story of three market solutions colliding in one multinational

[Mangesha Tigadar]

boondoggle gotta give bruce and the guys

[Lori Siegel]

credit they're republicans they don't give a about any of this stuff listen on

[Drilled Podcast Host]

the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Lori Siegel]

before we get started this episode contains talk of sexual abuse and sexual assault please take care while listening

[Lori Siegel (Interviewing on CNN)]

she's one of the most high profile politicians in the united states

[Lori Siegel]

but even it's april twenty twenty four and we're just setting out on our investigation into the man behind mister deepfakes the largest deepfake porn site when it

[Lori Siegel (Interviewing on CNN)]

happens again but even alexandria ocasio cortez has now become the target of an alarming and graphic online phenomenon in a new interview with rolling stone the democratic congresswoman is sharing the nightmare of discovering ai generated pornographic images of herself on x

[Lori Siegel]

it's been just a few months since taylor swift's deepfake went viral aoc isn't the only public facing woman to be newly victimized but she is a powerful one so cnn asks me to go on one of their nightly news shows to talk about the growing threat now what's a bit crazy about this moment is i'm not in new york right now i'm actually in the field in another country chasing a huge lead but more on that later okay it's kind of freezing very fitting into the day i'm currently in a satellite office it's small dark quiet and i have a second before i'll be patched in with the cnn news anchor abby phillips so my producers and i chat about this weird kind of meta moment so friends like we're literally here trying to track down the guy behind who's perpetuating this type of digital abuse he's like ground zero for this type of thing and then this blows up with aoc and it's gonna start happening like at a rate that we can't even keep up with this is the rate of technology now i'm experiencing this internal struggle how much do i share about what i actually know about deepfakes the depth of abuse how widespread it actually is what happened to aoc like taylor swift is that she found one deepfake image of her going viral on x but what i know is unfortunately there is so much more of that

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

if she

[Lori Siegel]

were to go to mister deepfakes right which lord knows i will not say this on television like there are pages of sexually explicit deepfake pornography videos of her and she doesn't even know like that millions of people are seeing but

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

you're in an awkward position because we were talking about this at dinner cody

[Lori Siegel]

mentioned it's like how to make a pipe bomb right like how much do

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

you want to say hey there's this

[Mangesha Tigadar]

website and this is where the content is and this is how people are

[Lori Siegel]

doing it this is the problem when talking about deepfake pornography by sharing the names of celebrities who are deepfaked or talking specifically about the type technology you can accidentally encourage people to go seek out those images or make their own it's a fine line to walk especially live on television so we decided to reference the problem without naming mister deepfakes

[Lori Siegel (Interviewing on CNN)]

lori good to see you on this horrible topic this deepfake porn phenomenon it's becoming more popular online but it's also easier to make than ever before some sites are even offering tutorials on how to create this pornography you're actively investigating some of these sites behind this technology what can you tell us about them

[Lori Siegel]

yeah i'm currently out here on an investigation into the anonymous person behind one of the largest deep fake pornography sites and what i'll say is abby it's not just about x and having an image come out on x there are these sites that are operating in plain sight where millions not hundreds not thousands millions of people are going every month to these sites to learn how to do this type of thing and then what's happening it's trickling out into the real world where seeing this in high schools you now have apps just as easy as it is to order an uber or order groceries now there are apps that encourage young men to digitally undress their classmates with generative ai and you know i think we're just scratching the surface on this it's a it's

[Lori Siegel (Interviewing on CNN)]

a huge problem as a parent i know actually a lot of parents who don't even put their kids faces on social media it almost makes you think that that might not be the wrong

[Lori Siegel]

decision yeah it's almost hard because parents don't even know that we need to have these conversations but these conversations need to happen because not only are we creating a new generation of victims but this type of technology when misused is creating a new generation of abusers mister deepfakes had thrived for more than six years in the shadows he'd created this community that deepfaked these famous women without detection from the mainstream but this fringe behavior it was moving toward the center for so long it felt like i was shouting into the east my team and i had been investigating this for a really long time and it didn't seem like we could get people to pay attention but things were starting to change the world was waking up we had lawmakers speaking out on this and more people were acknowledging that this was actual abuse that said mister deepfakes was enormous the community was thriving and we were worried that if anything it might mean that he would try to protect himself and the community as people were paying more attention so we knew we had to find him and we had to move quick i'm lori siegel and this is mostly human a tech podcast through a human lens you're listening to part two of our four part series searching for mister deepfakes i guess my question which is the thing that has been on my mind for the last nine or ten months who is mister

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

deepfakes i will show you a picture

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[Lori Siegel]

it's been six weeks since i sent a call out on social media asking if anyone knew anything about the man behind mister deepfakes and i get a tip a message from a stranger sent to me over tiktok saying he thinks he's uncovered the identity of mister deepfakes of course mister deepfakes the person behind it is someone i wanted to unmask someone i've been searching for and some would say maybe obsessing over for the last two years and now a voice in the void of social media has appeared his profile seems to be a company not a name he has barely any followers no human profile pic and i'm like who is this guy but also could it be true or is it too good to be true after messaging back and forth with him we commit to a zoom call the next day and then so when they come in just make sure to go

[Molly]

view and then pin them oh i see yeah now you're pinning you great

[Lori Siegel]

which is exactly what we did not even a full day after getting this tip i'm staring at an empty zoom box in a sunlit brooklyn studio surrounded by video producers and cameras anxiously awaiting the guy behind the tip let's roll okay all right airspeed ready ready let them in hi hi how are you doing good good to see you yeah

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

nice to see you as well the

[Lori Siegel]

tipster is jordy a thirty something year old man based in the netherlands he owns protection and cybersecurity company called sidenti now i have so much i want to ask him but i start with how did he find us we were

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

searching for the missed defects on different social medias and we were wondering if there is already somebody working on a case for mister defects because it's a really big website with a lot of different visitors so we were looking just for somebody who's on the case already and we found you on tiktok i

[Lori Siegel]

quickly learned the backstory of jordi's interest in mister deepfakes their company started to protect the identities of onlyfans creators influencers and celebrities who were seeing their likeness used for someone else's profit soon enough that identity theft crossed over into graphic deepfake videos many of those on mister

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

deepfakes two years ago we got the first email for the deepfakes and right now we always have like every single month five six emails coming in for deepfake video removal so and then it came on the news in the netherlands and we thought okay maybe we can investigate this further it was a dutch

[Lori Siegel]

journalist who turned jordi's attention toward this mystery the journalist had been looking into mister deepfakes after dutch politicians and prominent public figures appeared on the site he also wanted to know who's behind mister deepfakes did jordi know or could he and his team find out and then

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

he came yeah we are very interested in knowing who this person is who is this person how is his daily life looking and yeah do you have any information for us i said no unfortunately not we do not know who this person is we can try to research and maybe find him out and do some investigation by our team and there's where it all started for us

[Lori Siegel]

why did you care about finding mister deepfakes

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

what he is doing is absolutely wrong we believe using somebody's image using somebody's face should always and always be only with the permission of the person and if there's no permission of the person it should be punished how did

[Lori Siegel]

you find them

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

i guess a lot of luck we have found some patterns we have found some information we connected the software that mrdfix dot com used and eventually we found a name so

[Lori Siegel]

can you give us some of the clues that enabled you to track them

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

down absolutely so i will start at the beginning and show you the graph

[Lori Siegel]

that we have created jordy shares his screen and now we're looking at this intricate web of connections that should lead us from mrdeepfakes dot com to a

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

real person as you can see here we will start right at the eight

[Lori Siegel]

chan dot net post jordi's team started by investigating an eight chan post from when the site first launched as dpfks dot com in february twenty eighteen and it's here that jordi discovers a message that mentions a new deepfake website now we're going to use ai voices to bring these messages to life i'm beta

[Rebecca Nagle]

testing my tube site dedicated to deepfakes

[Lori Siegel]

please check it out and give us feedback this message traces back to a

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

generic email we found this email being connected to the deepfakes dot com gmail account and we started looking for some possibility of connections they follow the generic

[Lori Siegel]

deepfakes email across the internet down some wild paths including a shady offshore corporation site but and doesn't yet connect them to a real person so there our investigation stopped so they turned their attention to mrdfakes dot com itself and they look more closely at the software and the tools the site was using over the years searching for changes that maybe they could trace and it was here that they had their next big break

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

so we found out his username they

[Lori Siegel]

find a username of interest aznrico or asian rico it just kept popping up downloading site features during relevant time periods they tracked it from across the internet and they found it used on porn sites a student pharmacist forum and a car enthusiast page and then on another

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

site jackpot this is where he made a big mistake and click on his profile and just go to the information his personal email here is the hotmail

[Lori Siegel]

dot com email a real world email address attached to the username jordi's team runs this email through a database and finds that it's connected to a lot of things a twitter profile a yelp page a nike run club profile and another username so then they search that username and they find something noteworthy a bunch of posts on a site called black hat world forum right when mister deepfakes launched in a thread where others were talking about deepfakes the new username adds this post anyone working on projects involving this deep fake niche i have

[Rebecca Nagle]

a streaming platform and forum up and running and want to grow it with

[Lori Siegel]

someone jordi goes on to show us how all these little digital breadcrumbs cross confirm one another all this evidence it paints a compelling picture that this is the person who created and built the site it would be difficult for him to explain it any other way i guess jordi my question is like looking at all of this evidence was there a smoking gun

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

for us clue was that he said i was the original owner of the domain but i sold

[Lori Siegel]

the domain the dutch journalist jordi had been working with reached out to the personal email address and he got a response the man they tracked down admitted that he had purchased the domain but claimed he sold it shortly afterwards but this didn't match the evidence sometimes you

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

see changing in name servers changing the email address to a different email address but everything states with the same email address same name servers so i think with this email he basically exposed himself

[Lori Siegel]

this person's digital associations with the site not only spanned years there were also no signs it ever changed hands and when the journalist pressed for proof the suspected owner wouldn't give any how certain are you that it's him

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

we are very sure we're very sure this is the right person you're positive i'm very positive very and also that he deleted all his social media accounts after just one message if he may be mrdfects dot com and saying that we found information that he maybe can mrdfakes dot com he deleted everything why would you

[Lori Siegel]

even do that i guess my question which is the thing that has been on my mind for the last nine or ten months who is mister deepfakes

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

i will show you a picture

[Mangesha Tigadar]

and

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

you also said about like a person who is one of the most dangerous people on the internet and i will show you right now who this person is here is mister deepfake this is

[Lori Siegel]

good jordi enlarges a photo on his screen it's a selfie something you'd post on instagram and it's of a youngish guy somewhere in his thirties and he's got this huge smile on his face and there's a woman with him her arms around his shoulders her head tucked into the crook of his neck they're posing somewhere scenic in front of a body of water and honestly this is not what i was expecting it is so strange if i can just be honest like i've looked at this site too many times to try to understand why someone would create a platform that democratizes these tools that just annihilate women and just look at this photo it's like i don't know you walk by that that guy in the street and you don't think that's mister deepfakes yes absolutely tell me a little bit about the person you

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

the person that we found here can i call his name can i say his name yeah you

[Lori Siegel]

can say his name okay so his

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

name is david and david is very active in photography he likes photography makes a lot of different photos he also had an active instagram account where he created like professional pictures of people he likes to go on holidays he went to a lot of different countries in two years two three years i believe and he's just a really really normal

[Lori Siegel]

guy how old is he thirty five

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

at the moment and this picture is from twenty eighteen if i'm correct and

[Lori Siegel]

where did you get this picture from

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

his instagram and then we found his girlfriend's instagram and there was this photo published he was also a big fan of cars and he published pictures of his car he liked the if i'm saying it correct it's in a mitsubishi car and while we're investigating his address he found something very interesting we go to google maps and the same car is exactly standing in his front oh wow it's the exact same car oh

[Lori Siegel]

wow is that his house this is his house wow a house and address in canada and so you know based off of this information that he lives in canada yeah toronto canada toronto yeah i just have to say like i feel like you've got an interesting day job but that this does not seem like an easy search like even though it might seem like oh we went here that brought us here here here this is like pretty complicated searching yeah

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

but eventually everything was found out within forty eight hours so we were still very fast with this we did this

[Lori Siegel]

in forty eight hours you tracked down mister deepfake yes jordy agreed to send me his entire dossier with all of these details and all of the evidence mapped out his research was very compelling but we needed to vet it thoroughly and i planned to send it to our own cybersecurity guy david kennedy who could go a step further before we parted ways jordi shared the canadian address he found and he shared a phone number and i instantly knew two things one we're going to canada and the other we're about to call mister deepfakes i'm unable to take your call right now please leave a message hi david my name is lori siegel i'm a longtime reporter covering technology so i leave a message for mister deepfakes and i text and i call again

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

i'm unable

[Lori Siegel]

to take the call right now please leave a message so we're hearing his voice this time it was clear well he's not gonna call back so i'm gonna text him call him probably email and leave a voice memo but then my phone rings oh shit no caller id hello hello david david

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[Rebecca Nagle]

the declaration which is full of these beautifully rendered you know sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals does also have this darker

history to it why is it important for the darker part of the declaration of independence and the american revolution why is it important that americans know about

it well if we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded we won't understand the full context in which our nation now finds itself

i'm rebecca nagle gohin dawadon jalecayetli gay la citizen of cherokee nation are you

[Lori Siegel]

guys big chiefs fans hell yeah this

[Rebecca Nagle]

is first america the true story of how the united states came to be and how we got to this present moment listen to first america on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Ben Nadifray]

thirty years ago an island off manhattan almost brought down new

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

york city who will you trust your friends and neighbors who will you trust the people five miles overseas this is

[Ben Nadifray]

a story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough we reached

[Molly]

for a feeling that exists in this city but we're not stopping are we

[Ben Nadifray]

i'm ben nadifray and for my new series on revisionist history i took a deep dive into staten island's attempt to secede from new york city in the nineteen nineties and what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate america today listen to revisionist the staten island problem on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Mangesha Tigadar]

i'm mangesha together and i'm back with a new season of the podcast skyline drive this time i'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides organoids blood boys blue zones and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us i learned about some rad science i can make a brain for

[Lori Siegel]

you and then we can test what drug is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain here are some hard truths i would expect indians to age faster but i did not expect it to be almost a four

[Mangesha Tigadar]

to five year acceleration and get myself into a world of trouble i'd say

[Molly]

probably start bone smashing that doesn't work make it look more defined they say it works i don't know listen to

[Mangesha Tigadar]

skyline drive how to live forever on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast

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[Molly]

the rule i'm the rule and taylor swift is the exception it can happen

[Steve]

to literally anybody and also literally anybody can do it right now that's to me that's the hardest part to swallow

[Lori Siegel]

this is molly and steve they're married and they live in minnesota and they have a close knit group of friends friends they know through the restaurant and bar industry where they've worked in twenty twenty four when molly was pregnant with her second child something happened that shook them to their core it shattered our

[Steve]

friend group the collateral damage is i

[Molly]

can't calculate it it's insane ben was my husband's best friend for the past twenty years my husband was best man in both of his weddings he was in our wedding we've traveled the world with him his wife she had an inkling that something was up she went and looked on his computer fully expecting to find pornography but also like thinking infidelity probably and what she found was a ai face swapping website and she saw a ton of pornography of me and basically all of our closest friends like the wives of his entire wedding party all of us

[Lori Siegel]

when we started our search for the guy behind the world's largest deepfake porn site we worried that the abuse would trickle down from the site and the celebrities it targeted and straight into our communities our high schools and our neighborhoods and that's exactly what was happening the deepfake abuse was already spreading far beyond one site or one type of technology it was getting closer and closer to home she panicked

[Molly]

and got really scared and so she took screenshots with her phone of his monitor i was six months pregnant by the way and i took a couple days for me to wrap my head around it and then i decided i wanted to see the images so she showed them to me and one of his family members was there his sister in law coworkers of his a dead woman a friend of ours who passed in twenty three of an accidental overdose i knew like thirty forty women that were there i mean we work together in the service industry i don't know if you've ever bartended or waited tables but like it's a small it's a pretty close knit group

[Lori Siegel]

ben had basically created this ai driven fantasy world of his friends and his friends wives eighty five women in total he used a popular ai notification app prominently advertised on mister deepfakes and elsewhere my wife was

[Steve]

pregnant at the time and he was asking me how molly was doing like how how was the pregnancy going like i just want to let you guys know if you need anything i there and meanwhile at the same time like within like six feet of me probably was his laptop with all these nude images of my wife and all of our friends or and or their wives or girlfriends on there it was it's it was completely duplicitous and it it really shook me still that's the scary

[Molly]

part is we've lost our sense on reality as a society to where and it felt like nothing to him but it wrecked me now i'm going to spend the next twenty five years of my life reacting to this that's what it is you know it i mean and so for eighty five women and it probably took him less than twenty

[Lori Siegel]

minutes to do this molly also wants some recourse she happens to be going to law school at the time so she has an understanding of how to tackle the issue she goes to law enforcement to see what can be done

[Molly]

what i learned is that law enforcement is wildly ill equipped and unprepared and unwilling to do anything but it's not really their fault it's not their fault because they can only do what the law allows them to do and the law requires dissemination it requires intentional dissemination and the presumption of harm falls on the finding of that and the finding of the intent and the dissemination falls

[Lori Siegel]

on me to file a criminal complaint against ben molly has to prove ben not only created these deepfake images but that he shared them or posted them somewhere so to protect herself molly has to search for her own deepfake appearance

[Molly]

so now i am scouring the creepiest weirdest corners of the internet like trying to find my own pornography like i'm searching for my own victimization at the end of the day what it comes down to is i've spent my whole life keeping track of what my body does it doesn't do so to have to to know that now against my will and consent you make this frankenstein version of me that is currently existing in like a shadow world like there's another version of me out there doing porn you know and and will forever it's the sword of damocles is over your head for the rest of my

[Lori Siegel]

life this abuse has had a huge impact on molly's life it severed lifelong friendships altered the community she was a part of and shattered the safety she

[Molly]

felt very boring mundane things are very anxiety inducing now like being on a bus and going to commuting to work or sitting in a meeting or talking to a client you start to get in your head and it's like they're looking at me too long maybe they've seen it and you just start to wonder where is it it's like a spider you can't find you know i just hate that this is where we are headed as a society i'm scared for my sons that they will someday come to an age where this could be so flippant and it's sad it's really sad it's losing your grip on reality

[iHeart Podcast Advertiser]

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[Rebecca Nagle]

four four iheart the declaration which is full of these beautifully rendered you know sentences and paragraphs about enlightenment ideals does also have this darker history to it

why is it important for the darker part of the declaration of independence and the american revolution why is it important that americans know about it well if

we don't understand the full context in which our nation was founded we won't understand the full context in which our

nation now finds itself i'm rebecca nagle gohin tawa don jaleka yetli ke la citizen of cherokee nation are you guys big chiefs fans hell yeah this is first america the true story of how the united states came to be and how we got to this present moment listen to first america on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Ben Nadifray]

thirty years ago an island off manhattan almost brought down new york

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

city who will you trust your friends and neighbors or you trust the people five miles overseas this is a story

[Ben Nadifray]

about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough we reached for a

[Molly]

feeling that exists in this city but we're not stopping are we

[Ben Nadifray]

i'm ben nadifafry and for my new series on revisionist history i took a deep dive into staten island's attempt to secede from new york city in the nineteen nineties and what it all has to do with the politics of resentment that dominate america today listen to revisionist the staten island problem on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast

[Mangesha Tigadar]

i'm mangisha together and i'm back with a new season of the podcast skyline drive this time i'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides organoids blood boys blue zones and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us i learned about some rad science i

[Lori Siegel]

can make a brain for you and then we can test what drug is the best for your brain as opposed

[Mangesha Tigadar]

to his brain here are some hard

[Lori Siegel]

truths i would expect indians to age faster but i did not expect it to be almost a four to five

[Mangesha Tigadar]

year acceleration and get myself into a

[Molly]

world of trouble i'd say probably start bone smashing that doesn't work to make it look more defined they say it

[Mangesha Tigadar]

works i don't know listen to skyline how to live forever on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Theo Henderson]

mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith we the unhoused is the podcast that's changing that i'm theo henderson creator and host and for years i've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories in the last few months alone i've interviewed unhoused parents immigrants mutual aid organizers veterans the lgbqtia community and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence we'd in house is a two time webby and signal award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon tune in this week for my interview with doctor jill wicherick a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community listen to we the unhoused on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get

[Lori Siegel]

your podcast so it's like we're officially in toronto i can't believe we're here i mean how does it feel to like take it from like this has all been like online yeah doing this for like months and now it's like to be in this real yeah it's like i've been i feel like i've been in this guy's head and being so just like frustrated by it being like we've got this part this thing should not exist why does it exist and like who's the person responsible for this but it's all been kind of like online right and now we are literally in toronto so that's crazy a lot has happened in the five days since i got that tip about the real identity behind mister deepfakes the name had been a starting point for us just like jordi's web of connections we began building out our own web we've gathered possible addresses built out contact lists and identified key spots of interest in the area and this wasn't the easiest because he tried to erase himself from the internet in addition to sorting through all the remnants left behind online we got creative we used an ai facial recognition tool with the main photo that we did have and we had a bunch of hits him at a music festival behind the scenes even his own wedding photo all of this helped us prepare for when we landed in toronto on a brisk april day

[Rebecca Nagle]

our first

[Lori Siegel]

step after landing in canada was to talk to our hacker friend david kennedy we had enlisted him and his team to pressure test jordy's findings they had sophisticated techniques to retrace the dossier and fortify whether this was mister deepfakes or

[David Kennedy (Cybersecurity Expert)]

not it very very much looks like mister deep fakes pretty pretty high confidence level there based on everything that was posted i think there was a total of like seventeen different ways to kind of corroborate that hn post based off of it it's pretty compelling that it is this individual i had our researchers over at trusted second binary defense go through it as well you know people that that are in this field that focus on you know threat intelligence and unmasking nation states it overlaid very well with the research that they did and corroborated a lot of that so you know it's about as good as you're going to get without the person actually admitting that he is mister deepfakes right i think it's it's one of those things where you know it's it's very hard to stay anonymous online especially when you have one or two or three or four mistakes that you can kind of trace back to an individual their persona then eventually their identity then eventually who they are you know it's it's it's a it's a very high confidence that you have the the david doe

[Lori Siegel]

that you're looking for david doe david doe is the name of the person jordy found and david kennedy confirmed to be the key figure behind mister deepfakes with a high level of certainty and now we're driving to the first address and the most concrete lead that we have which is about an hour outside of toronto hey how are you hi how are you hi while i have a minute i finally connect with sebastian who's the dutch journalist that jordi had been working with sebastian had been reporting on the deepfake porn abuse happening in the netherlands for his newspaper well known

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

dutch celebrities and members of our parliament appeared on mister deepfakes it turned out there were more than ninety individuals i crafted a story out of this and it caused a huge uproar in in

[Lori Siegel]

the netherlands sebastian's newspaper decided not to run david doe's name in print but sebastian believed they had likely found the man behind mister deepfakes he like jordi found it suspicious that david shut off most of his social media accounts after sebastian emailed him asking if he owned mister deepfakes i think if you were

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

innocent and the journalist approached you you

[Lori Siegel]

would want to clear it up you want to clear it up so i

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

think he's trying to cover up himself yeah and he's also removing his yeah he's removing evidence before we got off

[Lori Siegel]

the phone sebastian shared his own motivation

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

my my my goal to to to make this story because lots of women are yeah feeling harassed there was this one prominent politician and she said to me i feel like like i'm digitally raped and that goes for a lot of women i think yeah there are so many victims and i think if you can reach him and you can discover what he's doing then you can really have a big story with lots

[Lori Siegel]

of impact when i got off the phone with sebastian we're pulling off the highway we enter a cozy looking suburb lawns are well manicured there are hockey nets and basketball hoops signs of families signs of community it's such a nice neighborhood it's like people walking their golden retrievers i think i'm also feeling just like this sadness you know it's like this is such a lovely little neighborhood where i could see like families so family oriented and like we're coming here for such a dark thing okay we are one minute away so it's gonna be up here on the left we come up to the house it's an idyllic suburban home with flowers and bird houses and a canadian flag out front and parked in the driveway oh my god is that the red car oh my god the red mitsubishi jordi found photos of on david doe's associated accounts oh my god we knew we had the right place and now i just have to go knock on the door okay you guys i think someone's in the back i think i just saw someone in the back okay in the garden oh god i think that's his dad this makes me sad okay i'm gonna go and ask okay all right can you unlock me i am all right okay all right thanks hi okay hey how are you good i'm lori do you mind if i just ask you a couple questions there's an older man standing in the driveway he has white hair and he's dressed casually in a black long sleeve shirt sweatpants and sneakers it's sunny outside but chilly and he's come from his backyard and knowing i'm not confronting david but his dad i decided to soften my approach i'm a longtime journalist i'm looking for your son david for what for a story i've been working on it's about something on the internet related oh sorry i can't is he it's no no no no no i don't want to tell you anything i try to introduce myself to share my credentials but there's also a language barrier he also doesn't want to talk i understand and please understand me do you mind if i just tell you if i say one thing to you just out of respect i'm trying to get some information about a website that your son might be involved with and i want to be really respectful in talking to you but i'm trying to chat with him sorry is this his car hi how are you i'm lori at that moment a woman pokes her head outside the door i'm assuming this is david's mother i try the same approach but she doesn't want to talk either i try to pass on a letter that explains the situation and has my contact info okay could i give you this in case you change your mind it's just a note that i wrote no no would you like let david know that we came and we're looking for him at least to chat oh no no because

[Mangesha Tigadar]

i

[Lori Siegel]

don't know why you come here i've been trying to get in touch with

[Rebecca Nagle]

him and

[Lori Siegel]

okay thank you have a nice day you guys bye back in the car tony our producer checks in after the encounter what are you feeling

[Jordi (Dutch Cybersecurity Investigator)]

mm

[Lori Siegel]

feel shitty like all of that didn't feel shitty like to kind of go and like confront a family about this and then i have to like grapple with in my head but doesn't it feel shitty to like the thousands and thousands of women who are being exposed on this site it's like when you think about searching for mister deepfakes you think about like going to like an underground place full of like hackers with hoodies you don't think about going to a family oriented neighborhood in a house that has like bird cages you know and gardening and you know two parents who are afraid but then you gotta take a step back and remember why i'm knocking on that door before we move on i decide to call david doe using the same number i used before i imagine his parents might be calling him now too so i dial i'm unable to take a call

[Theo Henderson]

right now

[Lori Siegel]

after leaving a message you can hang up or press pound for more options hey david it's lori again i'm hoping you'll be able to give us a call we just went by and stopped by the address that we had on file for you based off of some of the investigation and i believe it's your parents home and candidly like david like i don't want to talk to your parents i really want to talk to you so give me a call back this was just the first stop over the next few days we follow a ton of leads we canvass the neighborhood i'm looking for a david doe i know his parents so go to the other addresses we found hi is this david no you got the wrong address i was looking for a guy named david david doe i don't think they're home we had verified that david went to pharmacy school and gathered contacts he might have known there one we discovered actually worked at a costco pharmacy nearby i'm looking to find a guy named david doe oh oh wow okay you're the one that messaged me in the flesh and we're just looking i'm trying to get in touch with him and so i was wondering if like you had you could tell me anything about like where he lives if you know about a website he potentially owns anything like that i don't

[Rebecca Nagle]

know any particular details but i can

[Lori Siegel]

take your contact information and see if

[Rebecca Nagle]

i can reach out to david do

[Lori Siegel]

you mind at a local library we find his high school yearbook there he is wow he looks really young he's wearing a tie and a graduation robe and next to him is an earnest quote about making all these memories and friends that won't be forgotten we took photos of the pages and we jotted down the names of the people in his class to try contacting them later it's our last day in canada and we've traveled miles across ontario we've spoken to a lot of people and collected a bunch of new clues that said still no david doe at this point he's like a ghost it's crazy because we know his name which i thought was gonna be the hardest thing once we knew his name because he's just like living out in the world very openly but we have not been able to get to him he's actually a lot harder to get to and we've given him every opportunity to speak with us and so like we've got to figure out a way to get one step closer so i decide to make one more stop to return to the place where we got closest to him this is not the door i want to be knocking on his parents house i'd had my note translated into vietnamese and i figure i'll leave it for his parents in case they want to reconsider talking to me try again they don't come to the door and as i'm leaving their home i peek into the red mitsubishi and i notice something you know what's interesting is there was a baby i looked in the red car there was a baby seat interesting like does mister deepfake have a kid the idea that mister deepfakes could be a dad was shocking it just didn't match the person i had in my

[Rebecca Nagle]

head

[Lori Siegel]

back at the hotel with a minute to think about the day i call roxy you've been in it for

[Molly]

like a few days now just hardcore investigating and knocking on doors and things how are you doing

[Lori Siegel]

you know it's funny it's like i can get so obsessed that i forget like why i'm even doing it you know it's like you get into this adrenaline go mode and i think there was like this moment when i'm talking to that dad and it's so heartbreaking like you forget that a big part of accountability is heartbreak and so it i think it just makes it even a little more confusing to me of like how can you how can you have this site that does this thing that is so bad for humanity when you grew up in a place that seems like the best of humanity i mean it's really

[Molly]

interesting disturbing that he might be a father it would be so much easier if they were just the villain that you picture you know i know it

[Lori Siegel]

would just be so much more simple this wasn't just about the villain you picture i was thinking about having a baby at the time and roxy was pregnant and we were both thinking a lot about the world that our children will grow up in my biggest fear was that we weren't just gonna create new victims but we would create new villains who don't look like villains young boys who look at mister deepfakes and think and that's why this site was so dangerous to us there are so many things in the world right now that are out of our control that

[Molly]

feel shitty i mean i think it's just one step in a big big journey that we're on but it's an important one and you know i think you just gotta get back here to new york and i know we keep

[Lori Siegel]

digging you know we'll keep digging yeah next week on mister deepfakes we're on a stakeout i mean hopefully we're in the right parking lot he will show up any minute we have like a very small window of time a lot of things have to happen for us to be able to get to him so fingers crossed there he is find searching for mister d fake part three right here in the mostly human podcast

[David Kennedy (Cybersecurity Expert)]

feed

[Lori Siegel]

if you've been targeted by sexually explicit deepfakes we want to hear from you email us at helloostlyhuman dot com and for resources visit beyondmrdeepfakes dot com that's beyond mrdeepfakes dot com for resources if you or a loved one needs support text hope to six four six seven three or call or text nine hundred and eighty eight mostly human is a production of iheart podcast and mostly human media searching for mister deepfakes is a multi year investigation in partnership with bfd and eleven eleven media it's produced and edited by lori siegel nicole boucher lauren hanson abou zafar roxy hunt and tony castle sound design and mixing by derek clements and abu zafar if you want to see our short form vertical docuseries on mister deepfakes go to mostly human media on tiktok or paris hilton's tiktok channel find us all on socials at mostlyhumanmedia you can also watch mostly human on our youtube page and if you want to get in touch please email us at helloostlyhuman dot com we'd love to hear from you oh and please rate and review the show and share it with your friends see you next week

[Ben Nadifray]

thirty years ago an island off manhattan almost brought down new york

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

city who will you trust your friends and neighbors who will you trust the people five miles overseas this is a

[Ben Nadifray]

story about neighbors turning on each other and what happens when a forgotten place decides it's had enough but we're not

[Molly]

stopping are we

[Ben Nadifray]

listen to revisionist the staten island problem on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Lori Siegel]

one hundred and fifty years ago they were hunting us down to kill us and now they're hunting down immigrants

[Rebecca Nagle]

to deport them this is first america the true story of how the united states came to be and how we got to this present moment listen to first america on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Mangesha Tigadar]

i'm mangesha tigadar and i'm back with a new season of my podcast skyline drive this time i talk to scientists biopunks curmudgeons blue zoners super seniors and goa's top cryotherapy therapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us and i get into a bit of trouble along the way i'd say

[Molly]

probably start bone smashing that doesn't work make it look more defined they say it works i don't know listen to

[Mangesha Tigadar]

skyline drive how to live forever on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i've been hearing

[Drilled Podcast Host]

for decades that the markets can solve climate change today we have more incentives for market solutions than ever and emissions are rising on this season of drilled carbon cowboys the story of three market solutions colliding in one multinational boondoggle got

[Lori Siegel]

to give bruce and the guys credit

[Sebastian (Dutch Journalist)]

they're republicans they don't give a about

[Drilled Podcast Host]

any of this stuff listen on the iheartradio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

[Orderly Meds Advertiser]

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[Lori Siegel]

this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human