G: She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all

She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all

Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light by someone who had zoomed in on Madi’s face – but it was damning. Madi was a cheerleader with the Victory Vipers, a highly competitive “all-star” squad based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The Vipers had a strict code of conduct; being caught partying and vaping could have got her thrown out of the team. And in July 2020, an anonymous person sent the incriminating video directly to Madi’s coaches.

Eight months later, that footage was the subject of a police news conference. “The police reviewed the video and other photographic images and found them to be what we now know to be called deepfakes,” district attorney Matt Weintraub told the assembled journalists at the Bucks County courthouse on 15 March 2021. Someone was deploying cutting-edge technology to tarnish a teenage cheerleader’s reputation.

The anonymous sender had used “spoofing” software to disguise their identity behind an unknown number. The police had managed to trace it to the IP address of Raffaella Spone, a 50-year-old woman with no previous criminal record. In her mugshot, she wears a lime green turtleneck with her hair scraped back in a tight ponytail. Her eyes, thickly lined in black, look up at the camera in a cold stare; her brightly painted lips are pursed with anger. She looks terrifying.

“It appears that her daughter cheers – or did cheer – with the victims at the Victory Vipers gym,” Weintraub told the assembled journalists. Spone had taken it upon herself to smear her 16-year-old’s rivals in an attempt to get them thrown off the team.

As microphone after microphone was placed before him on the podium, Weintraub didn’t mince his words. “This tech is now available to anyone with a smartphone – your neighbour, somebody who holds a grudge,” he said, waving his own phone in the air. “Here in Bucks County, we have an adult with specific intent, preying on juveniles through the use of deepfake technology.”

But a little over a year later, when Spone finally appeared in court to face the charges against her, she was told the cyberharassment element of the case had been dropped. The police were no longer alleging that she had digitally manipulated anything. Someone had been crying deepfake. A story that generated thousands of headlines around the world was based on teenage lies, after all. When the truth finally came out, it was barely reported – but the videos and images were real.

Click on the link for the full story

Don't remember if this case showed up in the bad cops thread or if I read about it elsewhere, but I remember it turned out the cop that lead the charge against the woman who sent the video was a pedophile.

Didn't realize it took place in Bucks County, though.  That's pretty close to where I live these days.

Has "Deep fake!!" taken the place of "My account was hacked!!" yet?