• FOX13 Memphis News Staff

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - You worked hard all your life, saving for the day you could finally rest.

Only for everything you saved to disappear in an instant.

FOX13's 'Your Money' team works to stay on top of scams and warn you about them before they affect your family.

But this time, we're digging deeper into how those scams operate.

We know many of the scammers are from other countries from all over the world.

But now, FOX13 reveals how those foreign actors are using tools from our community to target you.

Chris Colocussis' story started off like so many others.

“I met Eliza through Facebook. In November 2024, I got a friend request," he said.

A quick romance sparked on social media. He was hardworking and divorced. She was beautiful and blonde.

But like many others, the conversation quickly turned to money.

“She brought up the whole point about affluence from talking to me about her affluence and how much money she had made, and she does crypto trading on the side. And ‘oh, by the way, what do you know about crypto?’”

The romance didn't stay on social media or even in text messages.

'Eliza' suggested they video call.

The same beauty as her Facebook photos answered those calls, convincing Colocussis she was the real thing.

She told him she worked for a well-known financial firm in Atlanta.

On the side, she dabbled with crypto.

Her friendly advice: that he do the same and she'd help him along the way.

“This was a way for me to grow my retirement fund. I had no plans to stay in it for very long.”

Colocussis laid out to invest $400,000, and she sent a courier to pick it up for him.

The exchange was captured on Colocussis's ring doorbell.

Then came proof his investment was working. Doubling value in just days.

"What I ended up reaching was about $800,000."

But that profit turned out to be as fake as the crypto app, as fake as the online relationship, and as fake as 'Eliza' herself.

All made to look convincingly real for foreign scammers, using American-developed artificial intelligence.

FOX13 has closely tracked the Mid-South's impact on shaping and running that AI technology.

With three SpaceXAI data centers here and a Google data center on its way.

An analysis by the Associated Press and security nonprofit C-4-ADS found Google's Gemini and ChatGPT were among the most commonly used by scammers in compounds in Southeast Asia.

AI allows scammers to work across dozens of languages, develop credible characters, generate replies, and even track the performances of the scammers who are targeting you.

But that's not the only help scammers in remote hot spots like Myanmar are receiving to trick you.

SpaceXAI's Starlink promises high-speed internet in the world's most remote places.

It is the number one internet service provider to Myanmar, including to scam centers, according to device data and public records.

And despite congressional scrutiny and a crackdown last fall, the scam business is expanding there.

At least 25 new scam centers have been built deep inside Myanmar, according to satellite imagery and device data from the International Justice Mission.

At least 13 of them use Starlink to get online.

Foreign scammers are using U.S.-born technology, costing U.S. victims their savings, their dignity, and their peace of mind.

“I still wake up occasionally in the middle of the night with anxiety where it just all of a sudden hits me."

One in five signals from devices at observed scam compounds in Myanmar was carried by a U.S.-registered company.

The Associated Press found 'zero' evidence to suggest any of these companies were doing anything illegal.

However, the patterns of abuse this investigation revealed do raise questions about how vigorously these companies are enforcing their own terms of service, which 'all' prohibit illegal activity.