China Automotive Systems: Q1 Earnings Snapshot
The Jingzhou, China-based company said it had profit of 24 cents per share.
The auto parts supplier posted revenue of $167.1 million in the period.
The company's shares closed at $4.12. A year ago, they were trading at $3.43.
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Car and Driver
19 minutes ago
- Car and Driver
Unfair Fight? 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX vs. Audi S4 Quattro and BMW 330xi
From the October 2001 issue of Car and Driver. The Law of Diminishing Returns: A yield rate that, after a certain point, fails to increase proportionately to additional outlays of capital or investments of time and labor.* *American Heritage Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. Relax, we're not about to launch into a sleep-inducing lecture on money supply, interest rates, and the effects of Alan Greenspan's bedtime rituals on the Gross Domestic Product. The definition is for those of you who are wondering how we could even think of comparing a car costing $25,000 with two that each cost 60 percent more. The question here is: If you spend that extra 60 percent—40 thousand bucks in all—do you get a car that is 60 percent better? In the 40-grand corner we have the Audi S4 Quattro and the BMW 330xi. In the other corner—actually, down in the bargain basement—lurks our underdog, the $24,520 samurai challenger, the Subaru Impreza WRX. Unfair comparison, you say? Duuuh! But wait—check the spec sheets. All three cars have full-time four-wheel drive, four doors, manual transmissions, engines with 225 or more horsepower, and interior and exterior dimensions that come within inches of one another. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver Our glowing reviews of the WRX suggest it's a worthy opponent to two of our favorite sporting sedans. The snorty little Subaru sedan has rocked the sporting establishment by producing a remarkable combination of performance and character for the price. We only decided to send it to the wolves after we looked at other similarly priced sedans and realized that matching them against the WRX wouldn't be a comparo, it'd be a slaughter. So we called in the German sharks. Both the Audi and the Bimmer have been frequent honorees on our 10Best list (10 straight years for the 3-series and three years for the S4's less-powerful sibling, the A4). Audi's S4 is a pumped-up, twin-turbocharged version of the A4 and has the added distinction of being the first and only car to outperform the previous-generation M3 in a comparison test. While the M3 has moved up in price—to $46,000—and in performance, BMW has also upped the performance of the entire 3-series line. The model representing a step down from the new M3 is the 330i, offered in both two- and four-door bodies and available with a $1750 four-wheel-drive system that changes the model designation to 330xi. Ask any one of us to pick our favorite cars, and these three would be high on our list. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver If you're thinking we've put ourselves in the unenviable position of having to choose a favorite child in this test, you would be right. We put the three through our usual battery of performance tests, lapped DaimlerChrysler's 1.7-mile road course, and tore up the curvy roads of northwestern Pennsylvania—a fitting locale since the discovery and eventual refinement of oil in these hills made fortunes for many and changed the country's path nearly 150 years ago. And, of course, without oil we wouldn't be writing this. Many of us have been quick to point out that there's no need to spend more than $25,000 on a car. Do the German cars deliver the goods to justify their major-league prices? Let's find out. 3rd Place: BMW 330xi View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver Let this comparo remind all the whiners out there that we don't automatically place the trophy in the trunk of the car bearing the whirling propeller badge before the test. In this one, the Bimmer finished last. What gives? Clearly, this BMW wasn't loaded to compete with the two others. Its 225-hp six-cylinder engine is the least powerful of the group, and it's pushing around the second-heaviest weight. At the drag strip, it lost the sprint to 60 and through the quarter-mile. Still, we love its engine. Neither of the other cars can match the throttle response of the Bimmer's six, which doesn't bear the burden of spooling up turbos. Comments such as "power oozes out in silky-smooth pulses" and "very smooth and strong and makes the best noise" filled the BMW's logbook. HIGHS: Supple ride, slick transmission, graceful moves, silky engine. LOWS: Flat seats, few features for a $40,000 car, underwhelming grip, revs too high on the highway. VERDICT: We expect more from a BMW, especially a $40,000 one. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver We also thought the five-speed was the best-shifting box of the bunch, with low effort and Teflon-coated detents. The transmission routes power to a planetary center differential that under no-slip conditions supplies the rear axle with 62 percent of the torque. Should one wheel slip, the electronic traction control of the Bimmer's Dynamic Stability Control system routes the power to the wheels with grip. The rearward torque bias preserves the rear-drive handling we've come to appreciate in BMWs, but sadly, BMW doesn't offer on four-wheel-drivers the optional stiffer suspension and larger wheels and tires of the 3-series Sport package. The setup of the base model is softly tuned and has weak tires. "Definitely the Cadillac of the group," complained one tester. The Cadillac of the group? A BMW? It was also the quietest. We're not above appreciating a good-riding car, but unfortunately for the BMW, neither of the other cars was unduly harsh, so the BMW came across as somewhat floppy. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver And then there are the tires, which squeal at even modest cornering speeds. The tires and the soft suspension conspire to hurt the BMW in every test of grip. The Bimmer finished the poorest on the skidpad and in the lane-change maneuver. On the road course, the 330xi rolled in the turns and the tires howled in protest, limiting cornering speeds and putting it 3.4 seconds behind the Audi and 1.8 seconds back of the Subaru. BMW has heard complaints that the base 3-series is too soft and in response has made the Sport suspension—but not the tires—standard on all 3-series produced after last March. That change was too late for this roundup, and any egg that appeared on the BMW's grille from its performance on the road course quickly flew off when we hit the back roads. The soft suspension displayed a fluidity we hadn't anticipated after those disappointing track laps. We still don't endorse the trend to light steering, but the brakes had the best feel of the bunch, with a firm pedal and perfect linear action. If you're still incredulous over the BMW's third-place finish, consider the features content of the Bavarian car, which at nearly 40 large as tested came with lousy, nearly flat seats that are covered in "leatherette." Sounds like a covering better suited to a $25,000 car, doesn't it? 2nd Place: Subaru WRX View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver We're still arguing the Subaru's second-place finish. Two of the three voters put the Subaru in first place, with the Audi second. But one—and he'll remain nameless—put the Audi first and the Subaru last, so when we averaged the scores, the Subaru missed the top spot by just one point. So what's missing in the $25,000 car? Actually, it's not what's missing, it's what's there, and in the case of the Subaru, there's a lot of extra noise. The Subaru's sound levels were the loudest during all our decibel tests. The WRX does not qualify as a loud car compared with others in its price class, but it becomes one when the competition gets very expensive. Poke around the Subie's exterior and interior panels, and you see how the noise trickles through to the inside of the car. There's only a paper-thin mat on the trunk bottom and no covering for the underside of the trunklid or hood—items both the BMW and Audi have. HIGHS: Killer value, seats, handling, and turbo 00mph. LOWS: Freeway hum. VERDICT: If you can find a better $24,520 car, buy it. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver So the Subaru has less sound-deadening material. The major parts of the interior—the sharp-looking metallic-ringed gauges, the Momo steering wheel, the center console— are all impressive, but the WRX's remaining plastic trim is much flimsier than that in the pricey cars, particularly the handsome Audi. The plus side to the frugal use of sound-deadening material is the WRX's light weight. The Subaru weighs 433 pounds less than the BMW and is 560 pounds lighter than the porky Audi. That said, two of the test drivers weren't annoyed at all by the noise levels. All of us loved the wonderfully designed and supportive cloth seats, the favorite chairs of the group. We also liked the Subaru's in-dash CD changer and cassette player, a combination unique in this zooty group. The Subaru also has no power seats, no stability control, no automatic climate control, and no sunroof. That nose-dived its features rating, but to us, many of those goodies fall under the "nice to have but you don't need them" category. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver The rest of the car is pure joy. There's a touch more turbo lag than in the Audi, but we could get a better launch in the Subaru, which gave it a slight edge in the low-speed-acceleration tests. The trick is to do the unthinkable in a four-wheel-drive car: Hold the revs at five grand, and drop the clutch. The WRX's full-time four-wheel-drive system uses a viscous limited-slip center differential that routes power equally to the front and rear axles. The clutch drop breaks the tires loose for only an instant, and then the WRX leaps off the line, scooting to 60 mph in 5.4 seconds and through the quarter in 14.1 seconds at 96 mph—both the best of the bunch. Turbo lag, however, rears its head in the top-gear tests where the Subaru trails from 30 to 50 mph. Keep the engine rpm north of 3000, however, and you won't notice the lag. We also found the Subaru to be the most neutral-handling of the group. Midcorner throttle lifts cause the rear end to slide just enough to tighten your line without provoking fears of a major spin. "Subaru got the big stuff right—the motor, transmission, seats, and handling," wrote one tester in the logbook. That sums up how we feel about this car. One can only marvel at what Subaru could do with another 15 grand. 1st Place: Audi S4 Quattro View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver So, you say there's no mystery to the Audi's win. Why wouldn't the most expensive car in the test win? Its as-tested price is $1659 above the BMW's and a universe beyond the Subaru's sticker—exactly $16,262 more. Likewise, you get a ton of stuff—power, torque, valves, features, gears, grip, and pounds in this contest. But you don't get the quickest sprinter to 60 mph. Owing to its greater girth and tires that refuse to break loose at the moment of launch despite our best efforts, the Audi trailed the Subaru to 60 mph by a smidge, 0.1 second. By 100 mph, however, the Audi had picked up enough steam to be a half-second ahead of the two other cars, and it continued to widen the gap to its governed 142-mph top speed. But the Audi is the king of every other performance contest, posting significantly better numbers on the skidpad (Audi, 0.86 g; Subaru, 0.82 g; BMW, 0.78 g), through the lane change (67.8 mph versus 66.5 for the Subaru and 63.1 for the BMW), and around the road course, where it was nearly two seconds a lap quicker than the second-place finisher, the Subaru. HIGHS: First-class cabin appointments, potent turbo mill, tenacious chassis. LOWS: Touchy brakes, rubbery shifter. VERDICT: Feels like a $40,000 car. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver The Audi is the amusement ride of this group—sit down, buckle up, and hit the button. It's the easiest to drive of the trio, with benign handling and nearly telepathic steering. "The most enjoyable and secure car to drive fast. The rubber really bites in the corners, and the engine pumps power like a fire hose," said one test driver. Which brings us to the wonderful twin-turbocharged 30-valve V-6 engine. There's noticeably less turbo lag in the Audi than in the Subaru. The S4's engine enjoys a considerable displacement edge over the Subaru, so it feels more powerful off-boost. Plus, it runs less boost pressure (10.2 versus 14.2) and employs two blowers, which spool up faster than the Subie's single unit. Unfortunately, the six-speed's action is best described as rubbery. The gearbox routes power to a four-wheel-drive system that uses a Torsen limited-slip center differential to send power to the axle with the most grip, so the traction control only has to limit slip from side to side. Like all the systems here, it's transparent under normal driving conditions. View Photos JEFFREY G. RUSSELL | Car and Driver In addition to the shifter, the powerful brakes drew disparaging comments as well, despite their ability to stop the car from 70 mph in only 164 feet. "There's lots of pedal to push through before the brakes retard, and then the binders are way too touchy," mused one tester. Yet those two niggles did not alter our appreciation of this car's great versatility. Not only is it swift, it's also plush and very serene on the highway. It's easy to drive fast, yet as comfy as a La-Z-Boy. And no one can dispute the attractiveness and quality of the Audi's interior—its subdued hues and materials would fit nicely in a car costing twice as much. And as much as we liked the S4 model, it still came achingly close to being beaten by a car that is hugely less expensive. Perhaps it's not right to say that the S4 is 60 percent better than the WRX. Maybe the best way to put it is that in this test, our collective minds simply liked the S4 60 percent more. Car and Driver Specifications Specifications 2001 Audi S4 Vehicle Type: front-engine, all-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan PRICE Base/As Tested: $40,782/$39,534 ENGINE twin-turbocharged and intercooled DOHC 30-valve V-6, iron block and aluminum heads, port fuel injection Displacement: 163 in3, 2671 cm3 Power: 250 hp @ 5800 rpm Torque: 258 lb-ft @ 1850 rpm TRANSMISSION 6-speed manual CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: multilink/multilimk Brakes, F/R: vented disc/vented disc Tires: Pirelli P6000 225/45YR-17 DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 102.6 in Length: 176.7 in Width: 72.7 in Height: 54.9 in Curb Weight: 3652 lb C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 5.5 sec 1/4-Mile: 14.2 sec @ 97 mph 100 mph: 15.0 sec 120 mph: 23.1 sec Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 6.6 sec Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 8.7 sec Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 7.4 sec Top Speed (gov ltd): 142 mph Braking, 70–0 mph: 164 ft Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.86 g C/D FUEL ECONOMY 950-Mile Trip: 21 mpg EPA FUEL ECONOMY City/Highway: 17/24 mpg -- 2001 BMW 330xi Vehicle Type: front-engine, all-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan PRICE Base/As Tested: $36,385/$39,123 ENGINE DOHC 24-valve inline-6, aluminum block and head, port fuel injection Displacement: 182 in3, 2979 cm3 Power: 225 hp @ 5900 rpm Torque: 214 lb-ft @ 3500 rpm TRANSMISSION 5-speed manual CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: struts/multilink Brakes, F/R: vented disc/vented disc Tires: Continental ContiTouring Contact DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 107.3 in Length: 176.0 in Width: 68.5 in Height: 56.5 in Curb Weight: 3525 lb C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 5.7 sec 1/4-Mile: 14.4 sec @ 96 mph 100 mph: 15.5 sec 120 mph: 25.2 sec Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 6.6 sec Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 8.3 sec Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 8.2 sec Top Speed (gov ltd): 129 mph Braking, 70–0 mph: 175 ft Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.78 g C/D FUEL ECONOMY 950-Mile Trip: 24 mpg EPA FUEL ECONOMY City/Highway: 20/27 mpg -- 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX Vehicle Type: front-engine, all-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan PRICE Base/As Tested: $24,520/$24,520 ENGINE turbocharged and intercooled flat-4, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection Displacement: 122 in3, 1994 cm3 Power: 227 hp @ 6000 rpm Torque: 217 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm TRANSMISSION 5-speed manual CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: struts/struts Brakes, F/R: vented disc/disc Tires: Bridgestone Potenza RE92 205/55VR-16 DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 99.4 in Length: 173.4 in Width: 68.1 in Height: 56.7 in Curb Weight: 3092 lb C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 5.4 sec 1/4-Mile: 14.1 sec @ 96 mph 100 mph: 15.5 sec 120 mph: 25.2 sec Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 6.6 sec Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 14.2 sec Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 10.0 sec Top Speed: 142 mph Braking, 70–0 mph: 181 ft Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.82 g C/D FUEL ECONOMY 950-Mile Trip: 23 mpg EPA FUEL ECONOMY City/Highway: 20/27 mpg C/D TESTING EXPLAINED
Car and Driver
19 minutes ago
- Car and Driver
View Photos of the 2002 Subaru Impreza WRX, 2001 BMW 330xi, and Audi S4 Quattro
Read the full review When we tried to compare the WRX to other cars in its class, it absolutely spanked 'em. So we had to call in some bigger guns.
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
She was living her life on Instagram. Then scammers turned her into a fake crypto queen.
Months ago, Ahmet Tozal took out three credit card loans and withdrew his life savings to make a fortune off crypto. The 44-year-old Turkish garment worker, who lived in Istanbul at the time, said he'd been goaded by a new friend who contacted him via a random WhatsApp message in 2023. The woman claimed she'd messaged him accidentally, but was friendly and seemed interested in Turkey, Tozal said. She told him she was a wealthy businesswoman who would soon be visiting his country on holiday. Tozal said she sent him dozens of photos of herself, a young East Asian woman traveling the world and attending prestigious conferences. He said they video-called once, for a few seconds. Eventually, she suggested he try investing in crypto. The trajectory of their relationship has the hallmarks of what global authorities call a classic pig-butchering scam, typically run by gangs in Asia. Tozal said that over several weeks, the woman convinced him to invest about 400,000 Turkish lira, or a year's worth of his wages, into a cryptocurrency called UAI Coin. It never existed. Tozal told me he lost everything. Saddled with debt and broke, Tozal moved alone to Uzbekistan to find a higher salary that could feed his family and pay off an extra 200,000 lira in loan interest. His wife and four children stayed behind in Turkey. "Whenever I think about it, it makes one almost go mad," he told me on a call from his shared apartment in Andijan. Pig-butchering, a crypto scam that started in China, is now a global crisis. It draws its name from the concept of fattening a pig before slaughter: The purveyors build a relationship with a mark over weeks or months before persuading them to give away or invest large sums. A 2024 University of Texas study estimated that $75 billion has been lost to such schemes since 2020. In 2023, the Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas went bankrupt after its CEO poured $47 million of company cash into a similar scam. Tozal has little chance of recovering his money, and dozens of other men say they were fooled by the same scam. Betrayed and desperate for any restitution possible, they latched onto the only lead they could find: the woman behind the screen. Who was she? Each of the men had photos and videos of her, the young East Asian woman who seemed to be living the high life, but not much else to go on. As they hunted for answers, their stories of loss and grievance would come to haunt a person thousands of miles away, a millennial trying to make a name for herself on Instagram. For months, as he was lured into the crypto trap, Tozal knew her only as Dora. Over nine months, I spoke with more than a dozen men from around the world — many in Central and West Asia — who say they've been affected by this specific pig-butchering scam. While their experiences varied, each one was tricked with the likeness of the same Asian woman. Seven of these men, including Tozal, agreed to full interviews. I verified all of their identities, and they showed me evidence of their online interactions. Several also showed me screenshots of their financial transactions. Many were unwilling to be named and said they did not report their losses to the authorities for fear of being seen as fools and damaging their reputations. Some said they'd fallen in love with their WhatsApp acquaintance; Tozal said he and Dora were strictly friends. The men come from different companies and walks of life. The common denominator? They all had jobs and thus a source of cash. Aamy Ace, a 44-year-old Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing worker, said he was cheated out of $12,000 meant for his father's cancer treatment. Another man, a 24-year-old Kazakhstani restaurant manager in Almaty named Amir, said he borrowed and lost $8,000 — 10 times his monthly salary. They remember different names. Some said they spoke to "Jasmine" for weeks, while others knew her as "Anna." Several, like Tozal, told me their contact was "Dora." The playbook for this scam is standardized. Men like Tozal would receive a cold text and slowly be persuaded to strike up a friendship or romance with the texter. All were sent photos of the same young Asian woman. "A very standard hook is an attractive person, male or female, coming in and saying: 'Oh yeah, I have a business opportunity, I'm going to come see you soon,'" said Joshua James, a cybercrime coordinator in Bangkok with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Eventually, their contacts convinced them to invest in a fake asset. Most of the men said they put their money into a faux cryptocurrency called UAI Coin. A mobile app and fake trading website lent a sheen of legitimacy to the setup. At first, the profits seemed eye-watering. Erdi Bilgiç, a 36-year-old Turkish electrician in Zonguldak, told me his initial $100 investment turned into $500 overnight in late 2023. Bilgiç, calling himself an avid investor, said he tracks stock prices and bitcoin almost daily, and felt UAI Coin's prices moved in sync with the market. He said that when he withdrew his initial gains, he received the full sum in his bank account. Emboldened, he took out a $1,500 loan at Dora's behest, gathered his life's savings of about $10,000, and put them all in UAI Coin. "She told me: 'Sell your car, sell this, sell that,'" he said. Losing it all To Tozal and Bilgiç, it seemed as though there was only one woman contacting them. But scam gangs, many based in Southeast Asia, are known to force human-trafficked victims to work in teams, sometimes with multiple people posing as the same woman in conversation with a mark. The US Institute of Peace estimated in 2024 that some 220,000 trafficked victims are involved in scams. "Judging by a lot of testimonies of survivors of human trafficking coming from scam compounds, many of them were being asked to pose as attractive young ladies," said Mina Chiang, founder of Humanity Research Consultancy, a UK-registered anti-trafficking social enterprise. To make their ploy more convincing, gangs have a woman take part in occasional video calls or voice messages. Several men in the Dora scam told me they received voice messages and forwarded them to me. A few, including Tozal, also said they had brief video calls. These tactics helped to convince them that Dora was real, they told me. Once the men's savings are invested, the critical point of the scam unfolds. The victims discover they can't withdraw their funds, and the scammers try squeezing them for more. "It is what it is. My money is gone." Tozal said he asked Dora for help and was directed to pay a tax-related fine to unlock his account. When that didn't work, he said, an engineer's fee was required. He said he knew then that he'd been fooled. The funds he lost, including his debt, are worth about $15,000 now, in a country where the average worker earns $7,300 a year. "It is what it is. My money is gone," Tozal said. Others said they've lost even more. A 50-year-old Turkish academic in Ankara said he and his wife had sold their apartment to save for a new city-center flat and dumped that money, along with $50,000 he convinced relatives to invest, into UAI Coin. He showed me a police report he made in Ankara, in which he reported losing more than $100,000 to the scam. "I asked myself, how am I going to live? I can survive, but I have a daughter in school," he said. Now, he added, he and his wife are working weekends and second jobs to make ends meet. Finding Dora In the spring of 2024, the group scamming Tozal appeared to make a mistake. As the men nursed their wounded pride, some received an email offering further help. The sender neglected to blind carbon copy each victim's email address, and the men began to contact each other. They gathered on WhatsApp groups and social media, swapping stories of how they'd been fooled by UAI Coin. Soon, they realized they'd all been talking to the same woman. Younger ones, like Bilgiç the electrician, put her photos into a reverse Google image search. They found someone. She wasn't Dora, or Jasmine, or Anna: Her name was Abe. "I can't be sure 100% it's her, but the videos and photos that we saw online were consistent," Bilgiç said. Abe is a Malaysian woman, they learned. She lives over 5,000 miles from Tozal and Bilgiç and runs a public Instagram account. Her name quickly spread among the men. To those like Tozal, it seemed like the first real step to getting their money back. But as I soon discovered, this woman wasn't the mastermind of an audacious lonelyhearts scam; she was a different kind of victim. Abe Lim was 20 minutes late when we met at a café in Kuala Lumpur's upscale shopping district. Traffic was crazy that morning. "I'm so sorry," said the 29-year-old, sheepish as we shook hands. Lim was easy to find online, and once I got in touch with her, she was keen to talk. She has some 175,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts roughly twice or thrice a week, often glamour or fashion shots of herself. Lim told me her personal brand's focus is the climate crisis. Her family, she said, runs a petrochemical business that she left to build a social media following as an environmentalist. In 2023, she ran for a local state parliament seat while campaigning on climate action, but lost. Lim's day job is running a plastics recycling company she founded in 2021. She posts photos from conferences and symposiums across Asia and the US, and snaps of herself on holiday in Bali and at Buckingham Palace. The array of photos found its way into the phones of men like Bilgiç and Tozal, who believed "Dora" was a charitable multimillionaire. Sometime in late 2023, Lim said, she started receiving online messages from these men. She thought little of it at first. "Because I've sort of put myself in the public spotlight, I felt like it was expected," she said. In early 2024, she said, the men began contacting her friends and family and claiming she'd defrauded them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. There were rumors of self-harm or suicide. "You're like, OK, this is serious now," she said. "There were messages that said like: 'I'll fly down to kill you, track you down and make you pay for what you did.'" As the year went on, Lim was trapped in an escalating online storm. Messages flooded her inbox and Instagram comments. She said she received dozens of emails and texts a day and showed me several on her phone. Lim was all smiles in her interview, but her fatigue and frustration were palpable. "It's mentally draining," Lim said. Some heartbroken men tried to rekindle a nonexistent relationship with her; others sent threats, she said. For the first few months of 2024, she told me, she feared leaving her home in Malaysia. Lim now tries to delay her social media posts by a few days to keep her live location secret. "There were messages that said like: 'I'll fly down to kill you, track you down and make you pay for what you did,'" Lim said. The men were divided on whether Lim was "Dora" or an unwitting victim of someone pretending to be her. Some, like Bilgiç, said she clearly wasn't the woman they had chatted with. Several sent me recordings of their video calls, which showed East or Southeast Asian women holding up a hand or using a camera angle to obscure their faces. "Internet connection is not good," said a woman in one video I viewed. She was clearly not Lim. 'Should I compensate them?' As Lim and I sipped tea in Malaysia, she explained how she was grappling with a dilemma. With her personal brand living on Instagram, how much time should she spend defending her reputation and speaking out against scams? Should she stop posting? Her brand was about the climate crisis, not going to war against fraud. "I have a platform, it's not that hard for me," she said. "But do I want to be known as the person that combats this?" In February 2024, she posted several warnings about scams on Instagram. Some of the men were insisting she was liable for their losses because her images were used. "They say they know it's not you, but it's your photos anyway, so you should take some responsibility of compensating them with some amount," she said. Lim said she considered paying some of them until her family talked her out of it. "I had a lot of guilt," Lim said. "I felt like, would these allegations have appeared if I had brought this up in public earlier?" 'Who are you going to sue?' James, the UNODC cybercrime coordinator, said Lim fits the profile of a content creator whose images are farmed by scam rings. "This is actually just a third party that has nothing at all to do with anything in the scam, and they sometimes have to even suffer the legal consequences afterward. Because, who are you going to sue?" James said. For swindlers, Lim's account was perfect. She was not well-known enough for a target to recognize her, and she frequently posted photos of herself in new outfits or at public events — a wealth of content to exploit. Online footage and voice data can also be fed to an artificial intelligence algorithm to create a face filter for use in video calls, James added. In Lim's case, several victims sent me screenshots of video calls with scam workers, which appeared to feature AI-empowered deepfake face filters. When analyzing the screenshots, James said some images were highly suspicious, with tell-tale features of AI filters such as discoloration on the edges of the face and crispness around hair. He added that varying chin shapes and neck bumps in the webcam images also indicated the victims were likely called by at least two different women using deepfake filters. "I would say it is very likely the images with white are deepfakes," James said. Fraudsters, roaming free Lim said what frustrates her most is that she's reported dozens of Instagram and Facebook accounts using her name and photos. Many were not taken down. A Facebook search of her name shows her photos on a dozen accounts purported to be of women living in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Some claim to run a plastics recycling company with the same name as Lim's firm. "If you have a verified account with this face," Lim said, pointing to herself. "You shouldn't allow an account with the same photo to stay up." A spokesperson for Meta, which runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, told me via email that it was committed to keeping its platforms safe and that it continues to "invest in detection technology and work with law enforcement to prosecute scammers." "Impersonation is against Meta's policies and we remove these accounts when they're found," the spokesperson wrote. The company said it dealt with 1 billion fake accounts on its platforms in the first quarter of this year. Meta did not comment on Lim's case specifically. Legally, Lim can't do much to compel Meta, which is headquartered in California, to take down accounts using her images, said Eric Goldman, the codirector of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University. "In the United States, Facebook may have no obligation to intervene to shut down or correct scam accounts," he said. US law protects social media firms from liability for third-party content posted on their platforms. Meanwhile, Bilgiç and other victims in Turkey have engaged local lawyers in hopes of suing whoever took their money or compelling their arrest. It'll be a long shot. "It's the general principle of criminal law. If you cannot find the person committing the crime, your hands are tied," Tarık Güleryüz, a partner at the Turkish law firm Güleryüz Partners, told me about the country's legal standards. James, the UNODC anti-cybercrime coordinator, said perpetrators know the world's law enforcement system is ill-equipped to deal with pig-butchering scams. A victim's best hope is an international coalition involving Turkey, Malaysia, and wherever the culprits are located, James said. China, a country with considerable influence in Laos and Cambodia, has performed cross-border raids there, mostly against scam rings targeting Chinese citizens. For countries like Turkey and Malaysia, nearly 5,200 miles apart, the best the men can do is hope and wait. These days, Lim is posting frequently on social media and is trying to grow her brand as an environmentalist. "All I lost was some reputation and photos. I didn't lose money, I didn't go through heartbreak with someone who didn't exist," Lim said. This year, she enrolled in a master's program for sustainable development management at Sunway University in Selangor. Tozal, who lost his life savings to "Dora," is also trying to move on. He said his wife was furious with him, and when I asked last month how their relationship was faring, Tozal said he's just trying to focus on working to support his family. He travels to see his children once every six months or so. Sitting in the kitchen of the Uzbek flat he shares with a roommate, he wondered aloud if he should blame himself. Years ago, he'd seen news reports of men falling for scams and marveled at how they could be fooled. "But when you see bits of a luxurious life coming your way, when you see the money coming into your account, inevitably you start feeling a type of way, even if you don't want to," Tozal said. He was just being human, he said. Now, he's in a foreign land, working alone. Translation by Ezgi Evrim Ozkol and Evgeniya Strygina. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
