Speaker 1: It's time for True Crime Tuesday. The story is true,
Speaker 1: sounds true? No, it sounds made up. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Gerry and Shannon present True Crime, all right.
Speaker 2: I've had my car stolen. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: people have had their car. In fact, I've had two
Speaker 2: cars stolen in the course of my career. I suppose
Speaker 2: there is a whole new world of car thievery that
Speaker 2: is going on, and it is concentrated along the West
Speaker 2: Coast and more specifically right in Washington, d C. Think
Speaker 2: think of the violent carjackings that we've heard of in
Speaker 2: DC in just the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: For example, the attempted robbery of a vehicle used to
Speaker 2: transport oh, I don't know, the President's granddaughter, Joe Biden's
Speaker 2: granddaughter Naomi. Secret Service agents had to shoot a guy.
Speaker 2: Another Washington shootout involved US marshals who were consecurity for
Speaker 2: Justice Sonya Sotomayor. There was an FBI agent who was
Speaker 2: carjacked by a seventeen year old. Congressman Henry Quaar of
Speaker 2: Texas had a gun stuck in his face and his
Speaker 2: car was stolen. A guy who was arrested after crashing
Speaker 2: in a stolen vehicle, evaded police custody at the hospital,
Speaker 2: then stole an ambulance to escape. He was seen in
Speaker 2: surveillance footage driving away while wearing an hospital gown with
Speaker 2: the IV needle still in his arm. The thriving used
Speaker 2: car market of West Africa, it's what's driving the stolen
Speaker 2: car market.
Speaker 1: On the East coast of the United States.
Speaker 2: There have been I think it's about what is it,
Speaker 2: a million, roughly a million cars in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Car theft had been falling steadily since nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 2: and then we saw at least most of that, I
Speaker 2: should say most of it, not at least most of
Speaker 2: that was because of simple security systems that became very,
Speaker 2: very popular in cars and then became installed. They came
Speaker 2: installed on cars that you would buy. But early twenty
Speaker 2: twenty auto thefts have increased by about thirty percent. And
Speaker 2: the statistics for last year are incomplete, but right now
Speaker 2: they already suggest that we could see a record number
Speaker 2: of car thefts and violent car thefts like carjackings in
Speaker 2: the year twenty twenty four. About ten percent of those
Speaker 2: cars that are stolen in the United States today are
Speaker 2: smuggled overseas and what's amazing is those used car brokers
Speaker 2: in West Africa. They are very specific about what kind
Speaker 2: of cars they want. You saw this in Gone in
Speaker 2: sixty seconds. There's a market out there for high end
Speaker 2: cars and all it takes is a buyer to say
Speaker 2: something like I want a twenty twenty four Mercedes SL
Speaker 2: three fifty with leather interior, and you go get your
Speaker 2: henchmen to go out and find that car. The majority
Speaker 2: of times, the most common way to see deal of
Speaker 2: vehicle is the most basic. Find one with the engine
Speaker 2: still running and the keys inside. That is a crime
Speaker 2: of opportunity, and according to law enforcement, that's about forty
Speaker 2: percent of car thefts are again just the most basic.
Speaker 2: You left your car running and you left your keys inside.
Speaker 2: Think about times of extreme heat or cold. When it's
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifteen in the valley, you leave your
Speaker 2: car on to keep the air conditioning running. Or extreme cold.
Speaker 2: That's probably even more likely where you don't want the
Speaker 2: car to freeze up. So at fifteen below, I'm looking
Speaker 2: at you, Minnesota. You leave the car running, you leave
Speaker 2: the ignition fob in the center console, maybe not the
Speaker 2: key with the ignition anymore. You are trying to carry
Speaker 2: a bag of groceries into the house and they slip
Speaker 2: in while you're in the house and take your car
Speaker 2: and they're gone. If you figure that each I'm gonna
Speaker 2: say punk kid, because I'm gonna make generalization, gets about
Speaker 2: five hundred to one thousand, maybe fifteen hundred dollars a car,
Speaker 2: especially for the higher end ones. Then the next guy
Speaker 2: is going to get about two thousand four it, and
Speaker 2: the next guy's going to get twenty five or three
Speaker 2: thousand for it, and the price goes up so that,
Speaker 2: for example, in West Africa, the most sought after vehicle
Speaker 2: is probably a range drover or a Toyota pickup or
Speaker 2: a BMW Sedan. And if you get a BMW seven
Speaker 2: series to your pickup point, you're going to get fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred bucks for it.
Speaker 1: But as it goes along the supply.
Speaker 2: Chain, you've got the fence, you've got the shipping company,
Speaker 2: you've got the customs broker.
Speaker 1: Everybody has to get paid.
Speaker 2: And even after expenses, there's plenty of profit because you
Speaker 2: could sell that same BMW seven series for about fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in the capital of Ghana. And like I said, Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: was sort of the ground zero for a lot of this.
Speaker 2: In one specific place, there was a parking garage on
Speaker 2: Florida in Washington, DC that was an ideal place to
Speaker 2: stash the Mercedes or the BMW or the Dodge Challenger.
Speaker 2: The stolen car business was so robust in Washington in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three that that parking garage became a de
Speaker 2: facto showroom for these stolen cars. The buyers and the
Speaker 2: sellers would meet there every night, they would inspect the cars,
Speaker 2: the deal was sealed. Cars not sold within hours were
Speaker 2: listed on Instagram. They were shown by appointment, and it
Speaker 2: was dependable. It was a business. It was a marketplace
Speaker 2: that opened up. Text messages that were intercepted by law
Speaker 2: enforcement captured the buyers that were placing orders for very
Speaker 2: specific cars, very specific makes and models. One eighteen year
Speaker 2: old delivering stolen vehicles had six carjackings in a week.
Speaker 2: There was a twelve year old who made headlines throughout
Speaker 2: all of twenty twenty two and into last year after
Speaker 2: he stole a BMA, a Jaguar, an Audi, a Tesla,
Speaker 2: a cargo van, and at one point he hit a
Speaker 2: half a dozen dealerships in Maryland. In less than a month.
Speaker 2: He had been arrested twenty two times by the middle
Speaker 2: of last year, but because the Maryland judicial reform stipulated
Speaker 2: that kids under the age of thirteen couldn't be charged
Speaker 2: with property crimes, he was returned back to the property
Speaker 2: to the custody of his parents. Kids like that being
Speaker 2: manipulated by older gang members come in as pseudo father
Speaker 2: figures and the kids, a lot of them. Teenagers brag
Speaker 2: about their recent heightsts. They text each other gtarl Grand
Speaker 2: theft auto real life.
Speaker 1: You can train on social media.
Speaker 2: You could see the Kia challenge on how to pick
Speaker 2: up a key or a Hyundai using a screwdriver in
Speaker 2: a USB cable. But the GPS tracker that you have
Speaker 2: in your car, that's not gonna help. They know where
Speaker 2: those are. They'll just pull him out. And most of them,
Speaker 2: like I said, some of the high end cars end
Speaker 2: up in West Africa for the burgeoning stolen used car
Speaker 2: market there for those high end the Mercedes that'd range
Speaker 2: rovers and things like that. About some of those weird
Speaker 2: and unbelievable stories in the world of crime, and this
Speaker 2: is a kind of a combination of crime and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: And this is something that should be a crime.
Speaker 2: Drew Crecente a couple of months ago got a Google
Speaker 2: alert that flagged what appeared to be a new profile
Speaker 2: of his daughter online, the daughter that had been murdered
Speaker 2: eighteen years earlier. It had Jennifer's full name, It had
Speaker 2: an old high school yearbook photo of her. It had
Speaker 2: a biography of Jennifer. It said she was a video
Speaker 2: game journalist. It said she was an expert in technology,
Speaker 2: pop culture, and journalism. The website where this new profile
Speaker 2: popped up was character dot Ai, and Jennifer's image and
Speaker 2: likeness were used to create a chatbot that people could
Speaker 2: talk to.
Speaker 1: Now. The company.
Speaker 2: Is a website that allows you to converse with digital
Speaker 2: personalities using the generative artificial intelligence. Think you're having a
Speaker 2: conversation with a computer like chat GPT or grock on Twitter,
Speaker 2: but it's interacting with you as if it's a person.
Speaker 2: These chatbots engage in conversation. They can be programmed to
Speaker 2: adopt specific personalities, biographical details of specific characters, whether they're
Speaker 2: real characters or imagine. You know, you can program it
Speaker 2: to be Benjamin Franklin or Darth Vader. And these companies
Speaker 2: that put up these chatbots have found a growing audience
Speaker 2: online because people want friends or mentors, or they want
Speaker 2: romantic partners. But this controversial technology also comes with incredible drawbacks.
Speaker 2: A guy in Belgium died by suicide a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago. He was encouraged to do so in a
Speaker 2: conversation with a chatbot. We saw that also with a kid,
Speaker 2: a twelve year old kid who was having conversations with
Speaker 2: these chatbots and eventually ended his life. So character AI
Speaker 2: again needless to say Dad Drew Crecente, who's seeing his
Speaker 2: murdered daughter's face on this website. He said, my pulse
Speaker 2: was racing of just looking for a big flashing red
Speaker 2: stop button that I could slap and just make it stop.
Speaker 2: It takes it quite a bit for me to be shocked,
Speaker 2: he said, because I really have been through quite a lot,
Speaker 2: but this was a new luw and give you an
Speaker 2: idea what he's been through. His daughter, Jennifer, was killed
Speaker 2: by her ex boyfriend during her senior year in high school.
Speaker 2: Character AI says that the company will remove any chatbot
Speaker 2: that violates as terms of service. They're constantly evolving and
Speaker 2: they're refining their safety practices to prioritize community safety. When
Speaker 2: they were notified about Jennifer's character, they said they reviewed
Speaker 2: the content and the account and took action based on
Speaker 2: their policies because the terms of service prevent anybody from
Speaker 2: impersonating any person or entity. Now, because of the nonprofit
Speaker 2: that Drew Corescente put up after his daughter was murdered,
Speaker 2: they spend time preventing dating violence. He was appalled the
Speaker 2: character had allowed somebody to create this facsimile of a
Speaker 2: murdered high schooler without her family's permission, and because of
Speaker 2: his work, like I said, in that nonprofit, he keeps
Speaker 2: the Google alert that tracks mentions of his daughter's name online.
Speaker 2: Every once in a while it shows up on a
Speaker 2: spam website, maybe a news report that repeats old information.
Speaker 2: But that October alert led him to his daughter's name
Speaker 2: and picture on character dot Ai, and he couldn't figure
Speaker 2: out it first, he said. The more he looked into it,
Speaker 2: the more uneasy he felt. In addition to using her
Speaker 2: name and her picture, the chatbots page described her in
Speaker 2: very lively language, as if she were alive. Like the
Speaker 2: tech journalist who geeks out on video games, always up
Speaker 2: to date on the latest entertainment News. He said the
Speaker 2: description didn't appear to be based on her personality or
Speaker 2: any specific interests about what her real life was, and
Speaker 2: he said the factual inaccuracies were beside the point. The
Speaker 2: idea of character hosting and then potentially making money from
Speaker 2: a chatbot using his murdered daughter's name was distressing enough
Speaker 2: he did not start at a conversation with it. He
Speaker 2: did not investigate the user that created the bot, but
Speaker 2: he immediately emailed the character company to have it removed.
Speaker 2: Asked about other chatbots on their site that impersonate public figures,
Speaker 2: a spokesperson said the reports of impersonation are investigated immediately
Speaker 2: by the Trust and Safety team. The character is removed
Speaker 2: if it's found to have violated. There is a privacy
Speaker 2: researcher at Mozilla Foundation. They said that this approach to
Speaker 2: moderation is way too passive because it plainly violates its
Speaker 2: own term of service. In the case of Jennifer Crescente,
Speaker 2: he says, if they're going to say we don't allow
Speaker 2: this on the platform, then they allow it on their
Speaker 2: platform until it's brought to their attention.
Speaker 1: That's not right.
Speaker 2: All the while they're making millions of dollars potentially. I
Speaker 2: mean it was it was disturbing enough to push this
Speaker 2: guy to ponder up taking a new cause, and now
Speaker 2: he's considering legal options and advocating for more active safety
Speaker 2: measures to prevent AI companies from harming or re traumatizing
Speaker 2: anybody else that may have been the victim of.
Speaker 1: A crime, in this case, the murder of his own daughter.
Speaker 1: So that's that awful.