30 minutes: AI-Powered Scams Are Exploding and No One's Ready ft. Rob Leathern

Rob Leathern, CEO and founder of Infohawk and the creator of the Facebook Ad Library, joins Daniel and James to break down the rapidly escalating world of AI-powered scams and online fraud. Rob explains how scammers are now vibe-coding their own analytics dashboards, producing 60-minute deepfake celebrity endorsement videos, and scraping public data to send hyper-targeted phishing messages. He shares why online fraud, estimated at nearly half a trillion dollars annually, is almost certainly underreported, and why the pullback in trust and safety teams at major platforms has made the problem worse. Rob walks through how Infohawk is using AI to fight back, why protection needs to come from both the client side (on-device models) and the server side (B2B tools), and why the internet is going to fundamentally change around verification and identity in the next two to three years. The conversation also covers the regulatory landscape, including proposed US scam liability legislation modeled after UK and Australian frameworks, why platforms need to open up ad transparency without giving bad actors an oracle, and Rob's argument that education and red teaming should come before any vendor purchase for companies worried about social engineering attacks. Daniel and James note that Rob is one of the few people who has worked on these problems from inside both Facebook and Google and is now building the tools to solve them from the outside. Thank you to our sponsors: AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com STAY CONNECTED James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger Subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.