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Inside the Face Fraud Factory

An underground site is selling videos and photos of real people to bypass selfie checks for online services. In essence, these individuals have been turned into stock models for services specifically designed for fraud.
Examples of photos available on the underground site. Blurring by 404 Media.
Image: 404 Media.

With funk music in the background, a man standing in front of a white background stares forward into a camera. He blinks slowly, then looks upwards. He rotates his head clockwise: first to the right, down, then to his left, and up again, before rotating in the opposite direction.

In another video, the man simply looks to his left, and then his right, and then the center as more music blares. In a series of related photos, the man holds blank pieces of paper, or an open laptop with nothing on the screen. At no point in any of the material does he speak or identify himself.

That’s because this man has been reduced to a shell. These videos, and this individual, are tools that can be used by fraudsters to bypass verification checks on cryptocurrency exchanges and other online services. This real man has been turned into a stock video model for services specifically designed to do fraud.

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