AI-Powered Princes and the Grandparent Trap: An FBI Agent’s Guide to Scams

An FBI agent discusses the latest ways scammers are separating you from your money – and how to avoid getting conned.

MATTHIAS BALK|PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
An older woman uses a phone.

By Olivier Knox

Oct. 21, 2026

Internet crime is big business. In 2025, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center tallied more than a million complaints covering losses of nearly $21 billion. Operations that spread across continents are constantly evolving and are using artificial intelligence to get more sophisticated.

To prepare you for the inevitable attempts to make off with your money, we sat down with Supervisory Special Agent Timothy Lynch, unit chief of the FBI’s Cyber-Enabled Fraud and Money Laundering Unit.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Decision Points: What is the most common kind of scam that you see, and how does it work?

Lynch: The most common scam right now would be cryptocurrency investment fraud, where people receive cold calls and emails asking them to make some kind of investment in cryptocurrency, where there are claims that are going to be incredible returns on investment. In actuality, the scammers are just taking their funds wholesale. It is by far the most common. It has the highest loss amount. We had about $7.2 billion in reported losses last year.

Why am I getting so many obviously scammy text messages?

Because scam has become global in nature and industrial in scale.

Over the last 10 years or so, we've seen an incredible rise of what are actually known as scam compounds. These are anywhere from 100- to 500-acre mini cities, typically based in Southeast Asia and now Africa. What they're doing is they are buying up cell phone information in bulk, and they are sending out a lot of these cold call solicitations, trying to victimize people.

IMF warns global economy nearing "limits of resilience"

The IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok, Thailand, on Monday. 

Photo: Matt Hunt/Anadolu via Getty Images

Oct 12, 2026 

Courtenay Brown

The global economy's ability to withstand new shocks is coming under strain, the International Monetary Fund warned Monday night in its latest economic forecast.

Why it matters: Worldwide growth has defied expectations, holding up despite the Middle East war and soaring oil prices. But some policymakers fear that dwindling energy reserves, mounting debt and growing reliance on the AI boom leave the world increasingly vulnerable.

What they're saying: "Without shoring up supply capacity and replenishing policy buffers, the global economy could soon test the limits of resilience," IMF economic counselor Silvana Tenreyro wrote in a blog post.

"Technology-related investment, while an important boon against the energy shock, is concentrating risks — making the global expansion heavily reliant on a small number of firms, sectors, and economies," she added.

The intrigue: The AI boom has helped offset the war's economic toll, but a sharp reversal could leave global GDP 1.1% below the IMF's baseline forecast by 2028, with a bigger hit of 1.8% to U.S. GDP.

That scenario assumes AI's promised productivity gains fail to materialize, triggering a pullback in investment and a financial market correction.

Continued AI investment could also fuel inflation, potentially prompting further interest rate hikes.

But a stronger AI investment boom — paired with faster productivity gains — could lift global GDP 0.6% above its baseline forecast by 2029.

Haiti & Jesuit Refugee Service

 AI Overview

JRS in relation to Haiti most commonly refers to the Jesuit Refugee Service (known as Service jésuite aux réfugiés or through its close regional/partner network like SJM Haïti / Service Jésuite aux Réfugiés et Migrants).

Key Activities and Context

• Accompanying Migrants & Returnees: Operating in Haiti since 1999 (via partner networks like SJM Haïti), JRS and its partners defend the rights, safety, and dignity of migrants, displaced persons, and returnees facing violence, abuse, or forced repatriation.

• Education & Community Support: JRS has historically supported localized educational infrastructure and school construction projects in vulnerable or rural Haitian communities (such as in Thiotte) and aided children and stateless people of Haitian descent.

• Advocacy in North America: JRS/USA actively advocates for Haitian migrants abroad—including campaigning for the protection and extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and humanitarian relief for hundreds of thousands of Haitians affected by ongoing domestic instability and violence.

(Note: "JRS" can also occasionally appear in sports contexts as an abbreviation or reference tied to Haitian football/athletes, such as player Jean-Ricner Bellegarde or Derrick Etienne Jr.).

Peter Thiel slams Obama, Pope Leo in new ‘Antichrist’ lectures

The tech billionaire accused them of using AI concerns to “boost their own popularity,” according to recordings obtained by POLITICO.

 

Peter Thiel made the remarks in his latest "Antichrist" lecture series in Nashville, according to recordings obtained by POLITICO. | Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

By Calder McHugh

10/08/2026 1:48 PM EDT


Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is escalating his attacks on critics of artificial intelligence, accusing former President Barack Obama and the pope of exploiting the public’s fears about AI, according to exclusive recordings of closed-door lectures obtained by Decoded by POLITICO.

In a new series of talks in Nashville, Thiel singled out the two leaders as he sharpened his warnings about the Antichrist — a figure who he sees as stopping the progress of technology and advocating for a “one world government” of regulation.

“Many people know that AI is politically unpopular and want to leverage that to boost their own popularity,” Thiel said. “Both Obama and the pope fall into this category. Obama knows the Democrats have no ideas,

 but they can at least oppose AI.”

The former president recently urged Democrats to come up with a more comprehensive plan on AI.

Thiel was even more critical of Pope Leo XIV, suggesting his focus on AI was an attempt to divert attention from the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals.

“He needed something politically popular to distract from the church’s child sex abuse scandals, and he found it in AI,” Thiel said, referring to the pope’s first encyclical on AI.

Who Were the AMALEKITES? The Only Nation God Ordered Wiped Off the Face of the Earth

 

 Who Were the AMALEKITES? The Only Nation God Ordered Wiped Off the Face of the Earth

AI

Dubbed

Bíblia Viva

Sep 10, 2026  Great Bible Stories

Who were the Amalekites, and why did God order that people erased from the face of the earth? In this video you'll discover the complete history of the only nation in the Bible to receive a sentence of total destruction — from the unexpected origin of Amalek as Esau's grandson and the son of a concubine named Timna, through the cowardly ambush at Rephidim against the elderly, the women and the children walking at the rear of Israel, all the way to the final judgment four hundred years later. You'll understand why Moses commanded that it be written in a book so it would never be forgotten, what really happened when Aaron and Hur held up his arms on the hilltop, and why King Saul lost his crown, his kingdom and his own bloodline for sparing a single life in the middle of that order. We'll also follow the battle of Ziklag, the Egyptian servant abandoned in the desert by his own master, the meaning of the word Agagite in the book of Esther, and the astonishing way this account stayed unsettled for nearly a thousand years until it was closed inside the palace of Persia. At the end, we face the hardest question in the whole passage head-on: what about the children? A story of rejection, revenge, divine patience and judgment that spans thirty-five centuries and still says something about how we treat the weakest among us today.

If this story moved you, leave a like, subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss the next videos, and consider becoming a member to support this work.

The Dark Side Of AI

Volume 45 Issue Ten October 2026

Last Trumpet Ministries ∙ PO Box 806 ∙ Beaver Dam, WI 53916

Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” I Cor. 14:8

The Dark Side Of AI

“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.” - Romans 13:12

Most technology is morally neutral. From major innovations such as the printing press, radio, television, and the internet, we have seen that these devices can be used for good or evil. At their core, these are merely a means of transmitting information from the source to the recipient. Now we live in the age of artificial intelligence, and, like other major innovations that came before, AI can be used in ways that are both helpful and harmful.

Using ChatGPT to generate cartoon images of yourself and family members isn’t likely to cause much harm, and AI can help people who struggle with math or grammar. But the technology is notoriously unreliable. On the one hand, 23-year-old Liam Price used the pro version of ChatGPT to solve a math problem that had stumped mathematicians for sixty years. (1) On the other hand, a video posted on YouTube records ChatGPT advising a user to walk to a carwash instead of driving because it was a pleasant day. “You’ll walk back with a sparkling car and maybe a little extra pep in your step,” the bot said. (2) At times, the technology seems brilliant; at others, it appears woefully incompetent. James 1:8 warns, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” The same holds true for artificial intelligence.

Chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini were trained on massive amounts of information generated by human beings. They absorbed content from the internet and books at a pace beyond human capability, but their sources of information reflect the human experience for better or worse. It stands to reason that AI in the hands of evil people will be used for evil deeds. And artificial intelligence models developed by evil men and women will reflect that evil. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us something important about the nature of man. This verse warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Desperately wicked men will make desperately wicked AI.

We must remember that artificial intelligence is not a single monolithic thing. Thousands of AI tools and models exist today, and more are emerging as the market continues to expand and more companies seek to capitalize on what has become a digital gold rush. A website called There’s an AI For That lists 53,859 AI tools from over 9,000 companies in 114 countries, as of this writing. (3) This website is just one directory. There are many other forms of AI not included in this count.

Even if you built a benevolent AI with a strong moral imperative whose sole mission is to enhance the human experience, there would still be thousands of other AI entities, some of which reflect the bad intentions of their designers. Some could be used to aid an authoritarian government in administering a surveillance state. Others could excel at impersonating real individuals and be used to commit fraud and identity theft. An AI could be used to generate pornographic images, sometimes based on real individuals, without the consent of the person being mimicked. AI could be used to design biological weapons and viruses, and it could hack into computer systems and digital infrastructure with far greater efficiency than any person. Some of these things are already happening. As we watch this technology progress, it is evident that there is a dark side of AI.

The Three Angels' Messages

The three angels' messages are a prophetic threefold warning and call to salvation found in the biblical book of Revelation (Revelation 14:6–12), which the Seventh-day Adventist Church views as a central mandate and final message to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. [1, 2]


The First Angel's MessageThe Everlasting Gospel and Judgment (Rev. 14:6–7): Proclaims the eternal good news of salvation through Christ and declares that "the hour of His judgment has come." It calls all people to reverence ("fear") God, give Him glory, and worship Him as the Creator of heaven, earth, the sea, and springs of water. [1, 2, 3]

The Second Angel's MessageThe Fall of Babylon (Rev. 14:8): Proclaims that "Babylon is fallen, is fallen," a symbolic declaration representing the spiritual collapse and corruption of worldly religious systems and apostate churches that reject biblical truth and unite with worldly practices. [1, 2, 3]

The Third Angel's MessageWarning Against the Beast (Rev. 14:9–12): Issues a solemn warning against worshiping the beast and its image or receiving its mark on the forehead or hand, depicting the severe spiritual consequences of rebellion against God. It highlights the steadfast endurance of God's people—"those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus". [1, 2, 3]

Source: Google AI

KTFLive: The Real Jeffery Epstein

KTFLive: The Real Jeffery Epstein

Keep the Faith Ministry

Apr 4, 2026 KTF Live

Make a Gift Now https://ktfnews.com/donate/ 

The Epstein scandal dominated the news cycle for months until the Iran war broke out. Since the Epstein files were released, while the public is still distracted by clamors for more salacious details, there is something that goes far deeper and broader and more sinister than the average Joe can imagine. And it will affect you. Join us today for a look under the wing of the bird. Hint: This is prophecy being fulfilled in real time.

Did Celtic Christians Keep the 7th Day Sabbath?

I Google(d) the following question:  Did Celtic Christians Keep the 7th Day Sabbath?

And Google AI (Super Intelligence) responded:

AI Overview

Yes, historical records indicate that early Celtic Christians in Ireland and Scotland observed Saturday as a day of rest.  Facebook 

Historical Evidence of Celtic Sabbath-Keeping

• The Day of Rest: Several 19th- and 20th-century historians note that early Celtic monastic communities abstained from labor on Saturday, treating it in a sabbatical manner.   Whole Gospel Ministries

• Queen Margaret's Influence: In the 11th century, Queen Margaret of Scotland worked to reform the Scottish church and opposed the local custom where people rested on Saturday ("the Sabbath") and performed their ordinary work on Sunday ("the Lord's day"). https://www.facebook.com/reel/1377568557646563

• aPrimary Sources: Historians like W. T. Skene in Celtic Scotland and A. C. Flick in The Rise of the Medieval Church recorded that the Celts kept Saturday as a day of rest, while also holding special religious services on Sunday. Facebook +1 https://www.facebook.com/AmazingFacts/posts/st-patrick-and-the-sabbathst-patrick-worshipped-god-on-the-seventh-day-sabbath-i/1357720269722405/

If you'd like, I can share more about:

The differences between the early Celtic Church and the Roman Catholic Church

How Sunday observance eventually replaced Saturday traditions in the region

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September 13, 2026 - Cover Story: Immigration Crisis

Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson

Sep 13, 2026

On September 11, 2001 after Islamic extremist terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people in the U.S., there were fears of an anti-Muslim backlash. Twenty-five years later, that’s flipped. Ten million or more Muslims have immigrated to the west. Today, Muslim figures are mayor of New York and London. But there’s also conflict. Europe is gripped by tensions caused by the rapid demographic change. President Trump showed that tough immigration policies can win elections. And now, after a wave of Conservative populist gains, Europe is following his lead. Today, an eye-opening Full Measure report from the UK on a story we’ve tracked for over a decade.

EMERGENCY — THE UN HAS JUST MADE THE MARK OF THE BEAST MANDATORY - DR. SHERRI TENPENNY.

Something Strange Is Happening Right Now

The Next Chapter

Volume 45 Issue Nine September 2026

Last Trumpet Ministries ∙ PO Box 806 ∙ Beaver Dam, WI 53916

Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” I Cor. 14:8

The Next Chapter

“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”

John 5:39

In ancient times, copying written text was a lengthy and expensive process. Individuals known as scribes would perform this painstaking work, often to preserve important writings such as Scripture. Over time, technology improved dramatically, enabling text to be copied far more quickly and efficiently. Around 1440, German inventor Johannes Gutenberg developed a working concept of his movable-type printing press, which would eventually allow written text to be mass-produced at a speed never before seen. In the mid-1450s, Gutenberg printed his famous 42-line Bible in Latin, the first book printed on a movable-type press in the West. (1) Before Gutenberg’s press was invented, it would take a scribe about three years to copy a Bible. In 1454, Gutenberg produced nearly 180 copies of the sacred book. By the year 1500, there were nearly twenty million books in Western Europe, many of which were Bibles. (2)

Before the printing press was invented, it was mostly the skilled and elite members of society, such as the wealthy, scholars, and the clergy, who had access to written texts. The poor and working classes were often illiterate. Gutenberg’s press made books more accessible and affordable. Thus, those who had little opportunity to read before finally had access to materials that could help them acquire one of the most important skills a person could ever learn: the ability to read and write. Once you have these skills, they open the door to a vast body of knowledge. Today, we have unprecedented access to far more information than was available to any previous generation. Much of this information is at our fingertips twenty-four hours a day through the internet and accessible on devices we carry in our pockets. Increasingly, however, the written word has fallen out of favor. In this issue, we will examine modern trends that give us a glimpse at the next chapter of human history. It is waiting to be written but might never be read.

The End Of Reading

On July 8, 2026, The Atlantic published an essay which declares in its headline, “The End of Reading Is Here.” The piece reveals some startling statistics about American literacy in this modern age. A survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts found that fewer than half of all adults in the United States read a book in 2022. An American Time Use Survey, which analyzed 236,000 responses, found that only 16 percent of Americans reported reading anything for pleasure on a given day - down from 28 percent in 2004. Fewer than 10 percent of Americans still read a newspaper, and 40 percent of people who get their news online prefer to watch or listen to it rather than read it. (3)

The piece also explains that young people are especially struggling with reading comprehension. A test conducted in 2024 found that just 35 percent of high school seniors were proficient at “analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.” (4) In other words, even when they can read the words in a written work, they may struggle to understand what those words mean.

Reading comprehension struggles extend even to the most prestigious universities. Margaret Rennix, who is the assistant director for humanities and social sciences support at Harvard University, reported that one student struggled to comprehend the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange and had to turn to the AI chatbot ChatGPT to help decipher it. Meanwhile, course evaluations at Harvard revealed a number of complaints from students upset that their assignments required them to read entire literary works. “By asking them to read, professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through a more difficult medium,” Rennix said as she explained the students’ mentality. (5)

A survey conducted in 2025 found that English teachers in public schools assigned between zero and four books a year to their students. A growing number of schools no longer assign entire books at all, preferring rather to use short excerpts of written works. One principal at an elementary school in Corona, California, reported that many school administrators are instructing teachers not to assign entire books as reading assignments. (6)

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel takes on popes, delves into end-times theology

Peter Thiel speaks with attendees at the 2022 Converge Tech Summit in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Wikimedia Commons/Gage Skidmore)

by Brian Fraga

Staff Reporter

July 15, 2026

In the last two weeks, the billionaire venture tech capitalist Peter Thiel has accused Pope Leo XIV of being a Chinese communist agent and insinuated in the pages of a prominent interreligious journal that Pope Francis was an Antichrist figure.

Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir and PayPal who has risen to prominence as a conservative political activist, has articulated an apocalyptic worldview that he says is consistent with traditional Christian theology but that his critics say is more aligned with Cold War-era geopolitics.

His interest in end times theology was even lampooned in the recently completed 28th season of "South Park," where Thiel was portrayed as a biblical prophecy expert, equipped with his own theme song, who speaks on the end of days to an elementary school assembly.

Thiel's stated concerns that the Antichrist will be manifested by a one-world government or by Luddites who aim to stop or slow technological progress was a subtext in several provocative comments he made at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on June 30.

As reported by CNN, Thiel delivered a series of dire warnings and predictions about the future of artificial intelligence and the West, even accusing Pope Leo XIV of inadvertently serving as a "Chinese communist agent" because of the pontiff's calls for AI to be regulated.

According to Thiel's logic, while Leo's recent encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas, may influence American policymakers, it is unlikely that Chinese leaders will heed the document's warnings.

Thiel argued that the encyclical threatens to slow down only one side of the "race between the U.S. and China" to advance AI. Leo, Thiel surmised, is thus "working for the Chinese Communists." CNN reported that the Aspen audience responded with laughter.

While it garnered chuckles, Thiel's comments about Leo revealed a Cold War mentality taken to a new intense level, said Massimo Faggioli, a theologian and church historian at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

Economic D-Day and the Prophesied Buy and Sell Restrictions

AI Overview

President Trump's announced "Economic D-Day" is a modern geopolitical campaign to totally isolate Iran, while "prophetic buy and sell restrictions" refer to biblical end-times prophecies about a centralized system controlling global commerce.

The "Economic D-Day" Against Iran

The Announcement: U.S. President Donald Trump declared an unprecedented financial operation to cut off Iran's remaining economic lifelines. Details were covered by sources like Iran International.

The Goal: The strategy targets oil smuggling, cash transfers, and front companies to force Tehran to halt its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The Penalties: The U.S. administration warned that any foreign country, bank, or business continuing to trade with Iran will face severe secondary economic consequences.

Prophetic Buy and Sell Restrictions

The Biblical Source: In the New Testament book of Revelation (Revelation 13:17), prophecy speaks of a future system where no one can buy or sell unless they have the "mark, name, or number" of the beast.

The Interpretation: Many theologians and believers view this as a total restriction on personal economic freedom for those who refuse to comply with a future global authority.

Modern Parallels: Commentators often link current events—such as strict international banking sanctions, asset freezes, and the rise of digital currencies—to the potential framework for future prophetic economic controls.

How They Connect

"Economic D-Day" is a specific political and military-linked sanction strategy against a single nation. However, prophetic observers often use these sweeping government actions and threats of total financial isolation as modern examples of how quickly global trade can be restricted.

Source: Google AI

AI just created a virus not found in nature, and scientists are worried

This technique could lead to new treatments for antibiotic-resistant bugs, but some scientists say the technology could be misused

By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron

August 7, 2026

Brian Hie and Aditi Merchant, both at Stanford University, examine a protein structure generated by Evo 2, an artificial intelligence tool that can suggest genome designs. Lab tests of Evo 2’s designs for an Escherichia coli killer exceeded expectations.
Andrew Brodhead/Stanford University

Viruses

Scientists used artificial intelligence to generate new viruses. The landmark first could lead to new antimicrobial drugs—and may pose immense danger to human health.

Scientists at Stanford University and the Arc Institute, a nonprofit AI and biology research organization, made the viruses using the actual genome of a bacteriophage—a type of virus that can kill bacteria—called ΦX174 (pronounced FYE-ex-174) as a template.

Using two large language models trained on the genomes of more than two million other bacteriophages, the scientists generated new, not-found-in-nature viruses. In a paper in the journal Science, they show that these viruses can kill even antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

“In this case, we wanted the model to generate the entire genome end-to-end in a single left-to-right pass,” said Brian Hie, an assistant professor at Stanford and co-author of the paper, in a statement. “We didn’t add anything.”

Making novel genes is not new, but creating an entire functional genome is much trickier—genes have complex patterns of interaction, and all their cascading effects need to be taken into account for the result to function as a comprehensive body. A single mutation can disrupt that delicate system, making the entire thing nonviable. Simple viral genomes are a fraction of a fraction as large as a human’s, but they are still incredibly complex.

The AI models were able to come up with thousands of bacteriophage genomes, nearly 300 of which the researchers then chemically synthesized. Of these, 16 of them proved to be viable and able to kill certain strains of Escherichia coli—including strains of the bacterium that had mutated to be resistant to the original reference genome of ΦX174.

The impetus for this work, according to the researchers, is that drug-resistant bacteria are rife and growing. More than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, killing more than 35,000 people on average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Having a drug based on the 16 phages could help fight antibiotic-resistant strains more effectively, Hie said.

Watch President Trump's Reaction to AI Teddy Roosevelt

 New York Post

Jul 1, 2026

Watch President Trump's interaction with the AI of President Theodore Roosevelt at the Theodore Roosevelt Library in North Dakota.

What Is Claude AI? How Anthropic's AI Assistant Compares to ChatGPT 🤖

 

Anthropic Destroyed 2 Million Books 😳

Anthropic Destroyed 2 Million Books 😳

Julia McCoy

Aug 13, 2026  Future of AI: AGI and Superintelligence

FREE GUIDE: 📘 The Content Creator's AI Blueprint  – https://FirstMovers.ai/blueprint/

Anthropic bought millions of physical books, sliced the spines off with a hydraulic machine, scanned the pages, and threw the originals away — to train Claude.

Court documents revealed an internal effort called *Project Panama*, and a $1.5 billion copyright settlement is now paying authors about $3,000 per book. A judge ruled the destruction fair use.

The End Game Has Already Begun..." -