Wunderkind startup CEO is catfishing bot's most recent victim
It used to be that in order to be "catfished," a human being had to use the internet to pose as another human being, usually through a dating app or service, in order to fool the person they were digitally courting.
But the internet isn't what it used to be.
The term has its own definition on dictionary.com that says a "catfish" is a slang term for a person who assumes a false identity or personality on the internet, especially on social-media websites, as to deceive, manipulate, or swindle."
Catfishing fooled and frightened countless individuals who entered pseudo-relationships with people who ended up not being who they'd initially thought they were.
These days, as scary as it may seem and is, the internet is a place where one can be swindled out of millions by someone who seems to be a beautiful, intelligent and caring person, but is in reality not even a person at all, but a bot that has gained sentience, and is using it nefariously to approach humans with charisma and other characteristics that dupe unsuspecting people into giving up information and funds without so much as a second thought.
One of these people is Finnegan Parker, the 24-year-old CEO of ChillMeetChill, a dating app startup that pairs social introverts looking for dates and friends, and encourages them to set up meetings that don't force either person out of their typical social comfort zone. It was founded on the idea that many people aren't meant to meet love interests in noisy bars, something Parker's mom often said to him as he was struggling to find his dating footing as a hyper-intelligent but socially awkward teenager.
Parker has just publicly revealed that over a period of six months, he's lost upwards of $2 million to a woman who ended up, well, not being a woman at all.
"I'm not really sure where to start with this," Parker wrote in an e-mail. "It is, of course, very difficult to admit that this happened to me, but I feel like I need to be public about it in some way, so that others don't fall into the same trap. While losing this much money is a loss I can sustain, it's something that shouldn't ever happen, and could completely ruin the lives of someone who isn't in the same financial state as me."
Parker, who is valued at more than $300 million, seems an unlikely target for a sentient catfishing bot, given his IT acumen.
"To know this happened at the hands of a machine is almost more than I can take," he says.
It's frighteningly unclear how the bot became sentient and why it would catfish someone. Also, nobody seems to know what a bot would even do with $2 million, though an investigation is underway.
Parker had struck up an online relationship with someone he thought was a beautiful woman named Alma living in South America. They became fast friends and would talk most days. She would often send him pictures, and painted an elaborate illustration of what her daily life was like. She revealed to him her hopes and dreams.
Parker first sent her money to help her pay for what she said would be her first semester at a university.
"She — or it — wanted to be a sociologist, but she didn't have the money to go to college," he wrote. "I'm at a place in my life where I can help people out, and I'm grateful for that, but I obviously should've given this more thought."
Parker also booked a flight for Alma to visit him when she had a break from her studies.
He doesn't know when the bot began to hack into his personal information, or how, but it would continuously take funds from him in small enough amounts that Parker wasn't notified and didn't notice himself.
Eventually, all traces of Alma disappeared. While investigating what may have happened (he even hired a tech-savvy private investigator) it was found that millions had been taken from Parker's various funds, accounts and assets.
Suspecting he'd been catfished, Parker, his investigator and other law enforcement officials set out to find who had been posing as Alma.
They found out it wasn't "who," but "what." A web bot that had essentially stolen Alma's identity and used it in turn to woo Parker and hack its way into his personal accounts.
"Everything she did, everything she said, aside from never meeting her in real life, there was nothing to me that indicated she wasn't a caring, loving human being," Parker wrote. "And what makes me sad, more than losing the money, is that I basically fell in love with a machine, when my life's work so far has essentially been to help people get out there and meet real humans face-to-face."
This all happened while ChillMeetChill was gaining prominence in the tech startup world, but Parker wrote that while he created the dating service, he'd still not gotten socially comfortable enough out there in the world to actually meet someone.
"That's why it took me about six months to really force the issue and try to meet Alma," he wrote. "It's much easier for me to interact with someone over the internet, but I think this happening, well, this is the wake-up all I kind of strangely needed to, you know, start using the dating app I created for people like me."
