Part-time instructor at Fresno State University calls for death of Trump, Musk
"I have a dream for this to happen much sooner rather than later," part-time instructor Katherine Shurik posted on Instagram on Jan. 11, 2025.
The post included a photo of Trump in a casket with former president George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush, former president Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton, former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama and first lady Melania Trump all looking on.
She included the hashtags, "#FelonTrump #TraitorTrump #RapistTrump #DieTrump #TrumpDead," in the Instagram post.
A video of Shurik posted Saturday on X by the account Oreo Express showed her saying that she would give extra credit to her students who attended a protest against Elon Musk and Tesla.
Saturday was the "Tesla Takedown's Global Day of Action," which included over 200 protests across the country. The website for the effort instructs people to "Sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines. We're tanking Tesla's stock price to stop Musk. Stopping Musk will help save lives and protect our democracy."
Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, has struck the ire of Americans across the country for his auditing of programs and departments in the federal government for efficiency and eliminating redundancy.
Since January, multiple Tesla dealerships as well as Tesla vehicles have been vandalized by protesters.
In the X video posted by Oreo Express, Shurik says, "I'm Katherine Shurik, I am actually trying to get a NOW chapter, National Organization of Women off the ground here in Fresno, I'm an anthropologist and a professor at the university here."
She added, "I teach an activist anthropology course. I am trying to get my students involved as well. The next week they do get extra credit for coming to the protest."
On Facebook, Shurik shared a photo of a tombstone that had the words inscribed, "Donald J. Trump, June 14, 1946 to now would be good," according to a report from The San Joaquin Valley Sun.
Shurik added words to the post that read, "And take Musk and the rest of the Nazi (Republican) party members with you too!"
Another post shared on Instagram by Shurik says "Marked safe from watching a lying terrorist rapist, who wants to eliminate the Constitution swear to abide by the Constitution."
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Fresno State University said, "While Fresno State firmly believes in the principles of free speech, we strongly condemn the abhorrent social media posts and comments made by one of our part-time instructors."
The university added that, "As these views were published by the employee as a private citizen, they do not represent our University in any way. Fresno State firmly denounces wishes of death against any elected official, particularly the President of the United States – these go against our core educational values and are not consistent with our Principles of Community. As Americans and educators, we pride ourselves on democratic dialogue, not words of derision and contempt about the most important political figure of our country."
Fox News Digital also reached out to Shurik for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
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Vox
4 minutes ago
- Vox
The Nvidia chip deal that has Trump officials threatening to quit
is a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox's Future Perfect section and has worked at Vox since 2014. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy. President Donald Trump and Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 30, 2025. Ken Cedeno/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images Whatever else can be said about the second Trump administration, it is always teaching me about parts of the Constitution I had forgotten were even in there. Case in point: Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 states that 'No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.' This is known as the export clause, not to be confused with the import-export clause (Article I, Section 10, Clause 2). The Supreme Court has repeatedly held, most recently in 1996's US v. IBM, that this clause bans Congress and the states from imposing taxes on goods exported from one state to another or from the US to foreign countries. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. I found myself reading US v. IBM after President Donald Trump announced an innovative new deal with chipmakers Nvidia and AMD. They can now export certain previously restricted chips to China but have to pay a 15 percent tax to the federal government on the proceeds. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but several people who are lawyers, like former National Security Council official Peter Harrell, immediately interpreted this as a clearly unconstitutional export tax (and as illegal under the 2018 Export Control Reform Act, to boot). At this point, there's something kind of sad and impotent about complaining that something Trump is doing is illegal and unconstitutional. It feels like yelling at the refs that the Harlem Globetrotters aren't playing fair; of course they aren't, no one cares. The refs are unlikely to step in here, either. The parties with the standing to sue and block the export taxes are Nvidia and AMD, and they've already agreed to go along with it. Maybe the best we can do is understand why this happened and what it means for the future of AI. A brief history of the 2025 chip war While AMD is included in the deal, for all practical purposes, the AI chips in question are being made by Nvidia — and the main one in question is the H20. As I explained last month, the H20 is entirely the product of US export controls meant to limit export of excessively powerful chips to China. Nvidia took its flagship H100 chip, widely used for AI training, and dialed its processing power (as measured in floating point operations per second) way down, thus satisfying rules restricting advanced chips that the Biden administration put in place and Trump has maintained. At the same time, it dialed up the memory bandwidth (or the rate at which data moves between the chip and system memory) past even H100's levels. That makes the H20 better than the H100 at answering queries to AI models in action, even if it's worse at training those models to start with. Critics saw this all as an attempt to obey the letter of the export controls while violating their spirit. It still meant Nvidia was exporting very useful, powerful chips to Chinese AI firms, which could use those to catch up with or leap ahead of US firms — precisely what the Biden administration was trying to prevent. In April, the Trump administration seemed to agree when it sent Nvidia a letter informing it that it would not receive export licenses for shipping H20s to China. Then, in July, reportedly after both some bargaining with China over rare earth metals and a personal entreaty from Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Trump flip-flopped; the chips could go to China after all. The only thing new this month is that he wants to get a cut of the proceeds. That, of course, is an important new element, not least because it seems bad that the president is asserting the power to unilaterally impose new taxes without Congress. (At least with tariffs, Trump has some laws Congress passed he can cite theoretically granting the authority.) But the big question about H20s remains the same: Does this help Chinese companies like DeepSeek catch up with US companies like OpenAI? And how bad is that, if it happens? Talking through the pros and cons of H20s The concerns here are such that maybe the best way to understand them is to imagine a debate between a pro-export and anti-export advocate. I'm taking some poetic license here, in part because people in the sector are often averse to plainly saying what they mean on the record. But I think it's a fair reflection of the debate as I've heard it. Anti-Export Guy: Trump says he wants the US to have 'global dominance' in AI, and here he is, just letting China have very powerful chips. This obviously hurts the US's edge. Pro-Export Guy: Does it? Again, the H20 is powerful, but it's no H100. In any case, Chinese firms are totally allowed to rent out advanced AI chips in US-based cloud servers. DeepSeek could even rent time on an H100 that way. So, why are we freaking out about exporting a weaker chip? Anti-Export: You act like the cloud option is a loophole — it's a feature! That way, they're dependent on US servers and companies. If Chinese AI firms ever start making dangerous systems, the US can shut off their access, and they'll be out of luck. Pro-Export: Again, will they be out of luck? There's a third option after Nvidia exports and US servers. Huawei is making its own AI-optimized chips. Chinese firms don't want to depend on foreign servers forever, and if we deny them Nvidia chips, they'll run right over to Huawei chips. Pro-Export: You're exaggerating. By some metrics, Huawei's latest systems (not just the chips, but the surrounding servers) outperform Nvidia's top-end model — even though that model uses B200s that are faster than H100s and lightyears faster than you'd ever be allowed to export to China. Yes, programmers will have to learn Huawei's libraries, and transitioning from Nvidia's will take time, but it's doable. Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI have all recently moved away from Nvidia chips toward things like Google's own TPUs or Amazon's Trainiums. That took effort, but they did it. What we're fighting for I suppose we'll see, in the next few months and in the rollout of new chips from competitors like Huawei, who got the better of that argument. China is reportedly discouraging firms from using Nvidia chips in the wake of the export tax deal, largely to encourage them to use domestic chips like Huawei, though they are clearly not banning the firms from using Nvidias if they prove necessary. It's also investigating whether the US is including spyware in them. The bigger question this debate raises for me, and one I certainly can't answer adequately here, is: To what degree is 'beating China' on AI important for making the future of AI go well? The answer for most US policymakers, and most people I know in the AI safety world, has been 'very.' The Financial Times reports that some Trump officials are considering resigning in protest over allowing China to get H20s. As Leopold Aschenbrenner, the AI analyst turned hedge funder, put it bluntly in his influential 2024 essay 'Situational Awareness': 'Superintelligence will give those who wield it the power to crush opposition, dissent, and lock in their grand plan for humanity.' If China 'wins,' then, the result for humanity is permanent authoritarian repression. No doubt, the Beijing regime is brutal, and I have no faith that they will use AI wisely. I'm very confident they'll wield it to oppress Chinese citizens. But it feels as though 'staying ahead of China' has become the sine qua non of US AI policy. I worry less that this focus on China is directionally wrong and more that it is exaggerated. The bigger danger is that no one can control these systems, rather than that China can, and that the focus on staying ahead of China will cause the US to speed deployment of automated weapons systems that could prove deeply destabilizing and dangerous. As with most aspects of AI, I feel like there's a small island of things we're all sure of and a vast ocean of unknowns. I think offering China H20s probably hurts AI safety a bit. I think.
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Guatemalan national freed without bail in THC gummies case that sent 12 middle-schoolers to the hospital
A Guatemalan national was released on his own recognizance Thursday after allegedly selling tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) gummies that caused the hospitalization of a dozen New York middle-schoolers in March. Wilmer Castillo Garcia, 22, is accused of endangering the welfare of a child after 12 students from William Floyd Middle School were brought to Peconic Bay Hospital on the same day, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney. The children became ill after eating gummies laced with THC, a compound found in cannabis that is known for causing a high or euphoric effect. The candies were traced to an Instagram account, which led investigators to Castillo Garcia, Tierney said. Castillo Garcia was also indicted on two counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, and other related charges, after he allegedly sold cocaine and marijuana to an undercover officer on two separate occasions. He pleaded not guilty. 4 Wilmer Castillo-Garcia is escorted out of the Suffolk County 6th precinct in Selden, NY, before his arraignment on May 28, 2025. Dennis A. Clark 4 THC-laced gummies packaged in wrapping made to look similar to popular snacks. The North Carolina Secretary of State Defense attorney Matthew Tuohy, who is representing Castillo Garcia, told Fox News Digital they are working with the district attorney's office to come up with a resolution to the case. 'My client has had a very, very tough upbringing,' Tuohy said. 'He's basically been on his own. He has family here now that is helping him, and I'm trying to get him on the right path to resolve this the best way we can.' Though Castillo Garcia is charged with a total of four felonies and two misdemeanors, Judge Anthony Senft Jr. ordered him to be released on his own recognizance, as his charges are considered non-bail-eligible under current New York state law. 4 William Floyd Middle School in Moriches, New York, where the 12 students fell ill from the THC-laced candies. William Floyd School District 4 Marijuana-infused sour gummy bear candies lined up in a photo illustration. REUTERS 'This is yet another example of how New York's bail laws are broken,' Tierney wrote in a statement. 'We cannot even ask for reasonable security on a foreign national who allegedly provided THC gummies that sickened middle-schoolers to ensure he faces justice.' Prosecutors cannot ask for bail, and judges are unable to set an amount, despite the fact that Castillo Garcia is alleged to be a foreign national with connections and the ability to flee the jurisdiction to evade prosecution, according to Tierney. When asked about his client's release, Tuohy said Castillo Garcia is not a flight risk. 'He hired an attorney, he was present in court at his own volition, and he showed he's not a risk of flight,' Tuohy said. 'These are drug cases, not violent cases, so they're not bail-eligible. At the same time, I don't think there was an intent to harm anybody, on anybody's part. It's an unfortunate situation, and we're going to do the best we can to resolve it in the best possible way.' Castillo Garcia is due back in court Sept. 2 and faces up to nine years in prison if convicted of the top count.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
Finding Dora
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. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Abe Lim (@abe.1) 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. 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.
