WEBVTT - 'How Is That Not Illegal' 0:00:00.680 --> 0:00:04.160 A quick note. This is episode four of a six 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:08.000 part series. If you haven't heard the prior episodes, we 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:12.720 recommend going back and starting there. It should also be 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:18.960 noted that this series explores sexualized imagery involving miners and violence. 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:32.520 Please take care when listening. Detective Timothy Ingram in New 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:36.319 York was en route to make an arrest. He had 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.519 been working the Levittown Deep Fate case for eight months, 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.279 ever since a number of young women first called the 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:49.120 police that New Year's Eve. He had had enough. It 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.479 was five o'clock in the evening when Tim and his 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:56.160 partner drove through a quiet Livettown neighborhood and stopped in 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:59.760 front of a small, light blue Cape cod style. 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:03.720 It looked like a regular house. The grass was caught, 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:04.040 you know. 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.000 The house had a backyard that she had a fence 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:08.640 with an elementary school. 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.240 It was just just an everyday house where you wouldn't 0:01:13.240 --> 0:01:14.320 expect this to be going on. 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:18.920 That morning, yet another young woman had walked into a 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:24.080 local precinct to tell the police a now familiar story, 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:29.559 one that matched the stories of so many others. This time, though, 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:35.600 the detectives had already received some key evidence evidence that 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.440 showed the person behind the posts was a guy many 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.319 of the women knew someone they went to high school with, 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:50.200 Patrick Carry, And at that. 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.080 Point my partner and I at the time kind of 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.880 looked at each other and you know, this has to end. Now, 0:01:55.600 --> 0:02:00.680 whether we go to his house and he clams up 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:02.680 and doesn't say anything, or whether he admits to it, 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:06.520 he was coming with us either way. So when we 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:08.560 got there, we knocked on the door and Patrick Carry 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.040 answered the door, and from what I recall, I think 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.600 he was shirtless when he answered the door. We asked 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:18.119 him to come outside after we identified herself as detectives. 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:21.040 So he turned around and he told his mom that 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.040 we were there, and his mother came outside also, and 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.440 he sat down on the front steps of the house, 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:29.639 in front of the front door, and his mom stood 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.520 next to him, and we asked him if he knew 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:35.520 why we were there, and he said no, and we said, okay, 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:36.920 you know, we just want to we want to talk 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:38.680 to you about some things that are going on the internet. 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:40.600 And I said, I'm going to read this to you now. 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.560 I wanted him to hear out loud the things he 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.440 was writing, and I wanted to see his reaction to 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.680 other people knowing about what he was doing, and that's 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:55.840 when we started to read this murder rape fantasy, and 0:02:57.040 --> 0:02:59.760 maybe halfway through it, his mother asked us to stop. 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.840 Looked at him. She had some choice words for him, 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:05.440 and he looked at us, dead in the eyes, and 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:06.800 he said, yeah, it was me. I did it. 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:10.560 What are the choice words his mum said to him. 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.000 I believe she said, you're a fucking asshole. 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:14.920 Wow. 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.240 Yes, And at that point we didn't need anything else, 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:20.960 you know, he admitted to everything without us asking a 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:21.639 single question. 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:27.040 We attempted to speak with Patrick and his family for 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:32.120 the story and they declined. Do you remember your reaction 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:32.959 to his arrest? 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:39.040 Yeah? I was shocked that they had built the case 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:40.880 enough to be able to arrest him. 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.520 It had been months since Patrick's off and on high 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:50.320 school friend Cecilia had given her statement to detectives. She 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:54.720 knew there was an ongoing investigation, but figured nothing would 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:55.120 come of. 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:59.080 It because when it happened, I didn't think that it 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:05.320 was enough. It was a threat and predatory and dangerous, 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:10.280 but I didn't think that the law would see it 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:14.840 that way. I didn't think that they would validate I 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:17.000 didn't think that they would view it as something that 0:04:17.040 --> 0:04:21.160 needed to be punished and put away. For I had 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:25.440 lost hope that this was going to turn into anything. 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:30.400 So when I found out that he was arrested, I 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.000 was so so surprised. 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:39.679 These concerns that Cecilia had about whether what Patrick Carey 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.240 had done to her would be seen as a crime, 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:48.560 those were the very same concerns nagging the prosecutors in charge. 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:49.000 Of this case. 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:55.120 Patrick Carey's behavior was awful, but was it criminal? 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:05.240 iHeart podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. This is Lavet Town. I'm 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:06.320 Margie Marthy. 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:19.360 And I'm Olivia Carvell. That night, Patrick was pulled off 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.839 his front porch, handcuffed, put into the back of a 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:26.840 police car, and escorted into a small eight y eight 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:32.120 interview room at the Nassau County Police Department. There, he 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.680 handed over his devices and signed a confession. One of 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:42.240 the questions the detectives had for Patrick was why why 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.880 did he do this? Which was the same question Margie 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.680 and I had for Patrick. Patrick and his former attorney 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.680 declined to be interviewed for this podcast, but what we 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:56.919 do have is the statement he gave the evening of 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:02.920 his arrest. Patrick started by admitting that he was the 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.520 sole person behind several usernames on the website, and that 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:11.640 he had been active there since twenty nineteen, his senior 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:12.680 year of high school. 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.320 I started using these accounts because I became bored and 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:18.440 could not find any interest in my life. 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:23.039 This is a voice actor reading verbatim from Patrick's confession. 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.320 I became addicted to internet pornography and began to find 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.040 websites such as comeonprintedpecks dot com. 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.640 Patrick says he used the website for more than two years, 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.960 posting pictures of the girls he went to high school with, 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:44.080 with their social media handles and other contact information. He 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:48.400 said that he encouraged other users too. As he puts, 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:49.800 it shame. 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.279 These females into a depression and caused them to be 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:57.880 too scared to use any form of social media. I 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.560 found a thrill in posting these things so that website 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:02.839 because I knew that what I was doing was wrong 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.000 and that I was causing fear and embarrassment to these girls. 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.159 This gave me a sense of life, knowing that in 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.160 the back of my head this was wrong and that 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:13.320 I would one day be caught. 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:21.000 He described it as almost an obsession, a cycle of 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:25.840 thrill seeking, then guilt, then thrill seeking again. 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.400 From time to time throughout the course of me posting 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.560 on this website, I did begin to feel remorse for 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:36.520 the fear and embarrassment I was causing these girls. Once 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:40.000 the sense of remorse wore off, I would become complacent 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.360 and bored and seek the thrill of posting something again, 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:48.760 knowing it was wrong. I am sorry for the fear, 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:52.080 suffering and embarrassment I have caused to all of the victims. 0:07:56.160 --> 0:07:58.280 I'm going through it and I'm reading his statement and 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:03.760 I'm like, hey, wow, it was awful, Like it was 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:05.280 an awful thing to read. 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.840 Assistant District Attorney Melissa Scannell was at her desk the 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:17.600 Monday morning after Patrick's arrest. Melissa has experienced prosecuting sex crimes. 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:21.239 She's also the head of the officer's cyber crimes unit. 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:26.000 The details of this particular report jumped. 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.320 Out a lot of what I do. I see really 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.960 horrible things, and I have, you know, my prior cases, 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:35.600 and my case is now. I've seen and dealt with 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:41.440 pretty terrible things. So sometimes my barometer is off and 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:44.040 I find it very helpful to go to somebody else 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:44.640 and be like. 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.320 Is this that bad? Is this worse? 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:51.480 You know, like, am I reacting normally here? 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.959 After she read Patrick's statement, she ran down the hall 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:57.800 to find her colleague Kelsey. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:08:59.880 Laura, it was shocking. 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:02.960 It was the things he was saying, what he was 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:07.720 doing was it was. It was shocking, and it kind 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:11.720 of it stays with you. To me, it seemed like 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.480 the purpose of the website wasn't even sexual anymore. It 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.680 was more, you know, let's let's take women down a peg, 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.680 let's you know, degrade them. Basically, that was the purpose 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:25.319 of the website was degradation. 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:31.720 Kelsey's another assistant DA. She usually works on racketeering cases, 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:37.920 things like organized crime, drug trafficking, extortion, but this case 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:42.600 was different. It was more personal. Kelsey had graduated from 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:46.840 MacArthur High School. She had walked the same halls as 0:09:46.880 --> 0:09:51.920 these young women. Kelsey and Melissa looked at the charges 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.080 and realized it was a series of misdemeanor harassment and 0:09:56.120 --> 0:10:00.880 obscenity violations, meaning Patrick would only face up to a 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:05.760 year in jail at most. They believed his actions were 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:07.000 much more serious. 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.959 There were absolutely some posts where he was soliciting death 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.480 or repe threats about these young women attached to all 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:20.119 of their personal information, and people were responding and writing 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:26.800 death or repe fantasies. When does that become somebody who says, Okay, 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.079 I'm gonna I'm going to act this out. 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.960 They believed he should be charged with at least one felony, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.640 but to do that they had to file new charges. 0:10:39.160 --> 0:10:42.400 Patrick had since been released from police custody and was 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:46.840 back at his family's home awaiting next steps. New York 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:51.240 law gave the prosecutors only ninety days to figure out 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:54.839 what those new charges should be. Kelsey and I were 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.760 on a clerk and how to make them stick. 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:01.839 Because if the charges get dismissed, them were out of luck. 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:03.560 We can't charge him with anything else. 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:09.080 The prosecutors weren't sure if what Patrick had done creating 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:14.200 and posting these manipulated images was a crime, let alone 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:14.800 a felony. 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.040 This is awful, This should be illegal. 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:19.360 But what is this? 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:20.840 What is this crime? 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:26.640 He was posting morphed naked photos of teenage girls. 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:27.760 How is that not illegal? 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:30.720 Because they weren't real. 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:38.480 Patrick could argue that these posts were artistic expression, which 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.720 is protected under the First Amendment. This is something that 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:47.959 still hasn't been settled in US courts, so the prosecutors 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:52.520 needed to keep looking. They needed to find something that 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:58.800 didn't count as free speech. They got warrants for all 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:03.160 of Patrick's social media accounts, everything from Instagram to the 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:07.760 messaging app Kick, and began going through his phone and 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:11.040 his tablet. Police found them in the top drawer of 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:13.200 a TV stand in the basement. 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:15.640 Off to the races. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.240 The first thing we did was start going through the 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.760 website and trying to first of all, preserve it. We 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:23.360 didn't know now that he had been arrested, is he 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:25.080 going to go back, is he going to try to 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:25.959 take things down? 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:28.080 At this point, we didn't know what we were where 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:28.600 we were going. 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:34.640 They had to start by identifying everyone who Patrick had targeted, 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.680 because it turned out he had gone after many more 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.400 women than the ones who had gone to the police. 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:44.080 At some point in the beginning, we just had nicknames 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.160 for them all because depending on how we were going 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.800 through it, they wouldn't necessarily have a name attached until later. 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:52.679 You know, he did attach their names, but we might 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:57.320 be looking not chronologically because we're going by username or things. 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.439 So we had a lot of nicknames for these young women, like, oh, no, 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:02.880 we've seen her before. That's you know. We had one 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:05.559 we called Eyeliner because she always had her eyeliner was 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.719 just one point in every picture. So we're like, oh, 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.280 there's eyeliner again, okay. And then eventually we figured out 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:14.440 what Eyeliner's name was, and we're like, oh, okay. When 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:16.920 we were going through the website by itself, we were 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:22.920 doing that together partially to buttress each other's weaknesses and strengths, right, 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.280 you know, I'm like a little bit faceblind, so she 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:27.960 was much better, like, no, we've definitely seen her before, 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:32.560 things like that, and then partly not to sound ridiculous 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:34.600 about it, but like for moral support, Like it was 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.000 a very difficult sight to go through, and you needed 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.040 to go through it with somebody else. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:45.000 The two women split up the work. Kelsey took the lead, 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:47.920 figuring out if they could charge them with a felony offense. 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.240 She grabbed the thick volume of the State's Penal Code 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:56.800 and started going through it page by page. 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:59.160 I literally just took the book down from the shelf 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:01.319 and started from the getting and went through. Even if 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.880 it kind of seemed like it wouldn't fit, like, obviously, 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:06.240 this isn't going to be a robbery. But I looked 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:10.720 at every single statute and I made a document to say, like, 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:14.120 is there anything that could arguably fit that we could 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:14.880 fit this into. 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:21.360 Melissa created a detailed archive, a catalogue of horrors. 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:27.040 Multiple spreadsheets tracking every post, who appeared on what post, 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:31.200 what was said? Did we think he had said anything 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:36.680 that qualified as a hate crime? Was it racist? You know, 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:38.800 we've described it a lot as trying to put a 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.200 square peg in a round hole. You know, we're like, 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.720 we know that this is bad, but there's no law 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.440 yet to cover this. But where are we going to 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:49.800 make this work? You know, how are we going to 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:50.400 make this work? 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:02.880 Over the the next few weeks, Kelsey and Melissa became 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:07.160 experts on Patrick Carey's m O. They learned how he 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.680 honed in on a victim and scraped their images from 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:14.560 social media accounts. When some of the women learned what 0:15:14.720 --> 0:15:19.000 was happening and made their accounts private, he would continually 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:21.880 check to see if they'd switch back to public again. 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:27.520 He was obsessively checking to see if okay, well it 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:29.520 got quiet long enough that now she made it on 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:31.840 private and now I can get back on there. 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.800 If a victim changed her username, he would learn the 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:39.240 new one and post it to the website. Then he'd 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:42.760 alert the other users and encourage them to find and 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.280 harass her again. This is a voice actor reading from 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:49.200 one of Patrick's posts. 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:53.120 Calling all sickos to seriously ruin her life. 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:56.920 The prosecutors found that Patrick would respond to his own 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.440 posts with different usernames, so to. 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:02.960 Either, you know, to boost the engagement and to make 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:05.640 other people think, oh, this is a really popular person. 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:07.600 Look at all these people commenting I want to go. 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:07.920 Look. 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.480 It didn't seem to be a financial motive to boost engagement, 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.680 at least not one that the prosecutors found, but Patrick 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:21.000 was getting something out of it. He even created accounts 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:23.760 where he pretended to be one of the victims and 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.960 begged the users to leave them alone. Melissa says he 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.560 was on the website almost constantly. 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:34.320 It was all day, all night, six am, two am, 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:35.280 two pm. 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:40.280 All of the time, he checked his work, googling his victims' 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:44.040 names to see if his posts were getting engagement. 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.640 To see if it was getting traction anywhere, and he 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.320 was able to find then several of these young women 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.680 then get posted to other pornography sites, and so he 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:58.480 was sort of obsessively following himself and following his. 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:04.200 Workfect Melissa and Kelsey found that even after his arrest, 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:09.000 Patrick went back on the website many, many times. 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.800 I think our final stats were about thirteen hundred posts, 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:16.280 and that was across fourteen different user names. 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:20.439 The prosecutors also learned more about how Patrick was editing 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:23.840 the pictures. It was an early glimpse and a technology 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:26.600 that was poised to make a giant leap thanks to 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:31.400 artificial intelligence. The website where Patrick Carey posted was created 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.879 around twenty ten, and for most of that time, the 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:39.719 site's he uses posted real photos of women and girls. Eventually, 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:44.480 photo editing apps became more widely available, the website became 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:48.000 flooded with requests for other users to quote unquote fake 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:52.640 their victims. Patrick was using apps like body Editor, which 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.040 likely would have taken him hours to make images that 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.160 looked real, but as soon as he uploaded the pictures 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:02.640 the tech was out of date. Like others on the site, 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:06.440 he'd send out requests for better fakes. On October eleventh, 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:09.520 twenty twenty, he asked on a thread about one of 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.360 his Victims, which was viewed by more than four thousand 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:13.240 people at the time. 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.080 Anyone know how to do Bruce slash beat up fakes 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:18.640 would love to see with a black eye or two, 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:21.960 or a fantasy involving much harsher treatment would be just 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:22.840 as appreciated. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:27.200 Other people were developing way better tools. The deep fake 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:37.800 revolution had begun around twenty seventeen. Deep fakes began popping 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:43.560 up on Reddit. Users were photoshopping celebrity faces on pawn performers' bodies. 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.600 Then someone posted a video of the actress gal Gado 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.359 having sex with her stepbrother. It was totally fake, but 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.160 it really caught people's attention because it looked so real. 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.080 One of them was a video of one scantily clad 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.520 lying on a bed weaving a sex way around. 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:05.480 She had Galgadot's face. 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.720 A Vice News reporter named Samantha Cole trapped down person 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:13.480 who had made it. He told her he was just 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:17.800 a programmer interested in machine learning, and that to make 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.120 the Galgado video, he had used a deep learning algorithm 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:27.879 to swap the actress's face onto the porn performer's body. Basically, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:32.680 he taught the algorithm to convincingly edit video by having 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.480 a study, lots of porn and lots of images of 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:42.000 Galgado's face. This programmer's name deep fakes, a portmanteau for 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:47.920 deep learning, and of course fake. Developers have been working 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.959 on different software to create realistic looking fake images for years. 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.640 The work he and other early adopters were doing would 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.960 have taken hours and a lot of computing power, but 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:08.280 the source code they needed was already available online. The 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:12.600 Galgado video inspired an army of AI programmers to make 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:17.480 more pornography, mostly of other celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:18.320 Taylor Swift. 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:22.159 Johansson telling the Post, this can happen to anybody. It 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.640 just depends on whether or not someone has the desire 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:25.399 to target you. 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:30.640 Deep fakes were also getting attention for their potential political impact. 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.119 A video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi edited to make 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:38.040 it sound like she was slurring her words, went viral 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:38.879 on Facebook. 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:44.240 We wanted to give this president the opportunity to do 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:48.200 something historic for our country. 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.840 As more deep fakes were shared online, more and more 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.920 people took to the deep fakes reddit and other forums 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:58.560 to swap tips on how to create realistic pictures and videos. 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.680 One the technology could repeatedly assess an adjust an image 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:07.280 until it got a convincing perfect match. 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:09.520 You guys, cool if I play some sports. 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:14.720 That's when another celebrity video starring a faked Tom Cruise 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:16.119 went everywhere. 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:19.800 If you like what you're seeing, sweet till what's coming next. 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:23.879 The AI model that was used to create the uncanny 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:28.720 Tom Cruise was also used to feel the largest non 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:34.240 consensual pornography website at the time, a website called Mister 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:41.000 Deep Fakes. For many people, celebrities and politicians, being victims 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:44.359 of deep fakes feels like a them problem, a price 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:49.359 of fame. What wasn't making headlines was that everyday women 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:51.880 were already dealing with this. 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.760 With changes this fast, no wonder the prosecutors on Long 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:01.320 Island hit a hard time finding a law on the books. 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.960 Melissa and Kelsey had just three months to charge Patrick 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:09.720 before risking double jeopardy, but they got what they needed 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:10.440 in one. 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:15.240 I remember her coming down and like beaming, like we 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:17.520 got it, we got it. And at first they're like, 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:20.320 we got what, what did you get? What did we find? 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:20.679 You know? 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:23.959 And then she said I found her picture. 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:30.720 After all this time talking about faked images. The prosecutors 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:34.600 had finally found something that would allow them to charge 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:39.520 Patrick with a felony, a real image. It was a 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:43.240 nude photo of one of the victims, a real picture 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.280 that had been taken by an ex boyfriend, who had 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:51.440 then shared it among classmates, including Patrick. Patrick had then 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:55.760 sent this picture to someone else Overkick, a messaging app 0:22:55.800 --> 0:23:01.600 which prioritizes user privacy. Not only is this image considered 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.800 to be revenge porn, but because the girl in the 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.639 picture was just fourteen when it was taken, it also 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:18.920 qualified as child sexual abuse material. In November twenty twenty one, 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:23.920 Patrick was indicted by a grand jury. Now we faced 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:29.680 multiple felony charges, including promoting a sexual performance by a child, 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:36.200 aggravated harassment, and second degree stalking. Not one of those 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:42.000 charges was related to the eleven hundred non consensual pornographic 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:47.240 deep fake images he had created. Patrick pleaded guilty in 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.399 December twenty twenty two, but that didn't solve everything for 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:55.840 the young woman in Leavittown. The website was still up, 0:23:56.200 --> 0:24:00.360 along with their photos and their contact info. They were 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:05.000 still exposed to the hundreds of online predators that Patrick 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:09.399 Kerry had called to arms. Did you ever consider going 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:10.840 after the website itself. 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:13.639 I don't think we have criminal grounds to do that. 0:24:13.720 --> 0:24:16.399 It's not hosted in the United States and certainly not 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:20.879 hosted Nasau County, so we don't have authorization to do that. 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:26.160 Nassau County prosecutors didn't have the power to take it down, 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:28.920 but someone else might. 0:24:31.560 --> 0:24:31.639 Do. 0:24:31.720 --> 0:24:36.119 You work in cybersecurity for security reasons? I cannot answer 0:24:36.119 --> 0:24:39.560 that question. Why do you have to keep yourself anonymous? 0:24:40.400 --> 0:24:43.720 I have many enemies, some show themselves and others who 0:24:43.760 --> 0:24:48.159 like to be invisible and attacked without warning. In cases 0:24:48.200 --> 0:24:52.800 of cybercrime, law enforcement is hamstrung by resources, by borders 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:58.159 and by jurisdiction. Hackers, on the other hand, feel hemmed 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:03.920 in by nothing. Accept their own skill. That's next time 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:05.159 on Leavitt Town. 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:13.840 This series is reported and hosted by Margie Murphy and 0:25:13.960 --> 0:25:18.840 me Olivia Carvell. Produced by Kaleidoscope, Led by Julia Nutter, 0:25:19.560 --> 0:25:24.040 edited by Nita Tuluis Semnani, Producing by Dara lup Potts, 0:25:24.480 --> 0:25:29.680 Executive produced by Kate Osborne. Original composition and mixing by 0:25:29.720 --> 0:25:34.840 Steve Bone. Patrick Carey's words were read by Jackson ark Our. 0:25:34.840 --> 0:25:39.520