Originally Syndicated on September 1, 2023 @ 5:27 am
Igor Reiant is the CEO of Entertech, a high-tech business that serves the entertainment industry, and a co-founder of the Dyninno Group of enterprises. It runs KidsCasting.com and allcasting.com, develops algorithms, and offers casting experts the greatest tools available to automate the talent-search process.
Igor Reiant’s Casting360 aka Talent6 fined $45,000 for deceptive advertising, fraud, and deceptive marketing
After fining Casting360, also known as Talent6, for violating state regulations, San Mateo County consumer protection authorities are advising aspiring actors across the country to exercise additional caution when chasing their dreams of greatness.
About 200 would-be performers complained to the Better Business Bureau about Igor Reiant’s Casting360 and Talent6 websites, according to the District Attorney’s Office Consumer Protection Unit, which claimed it began the probe.
Casting360 aka Talent6 fined $45,000 for deceptive advertising, fraud, and deceptive practices
According to Deputy District Attorney Chuck Finney, the website connects performers to potential auditions and charges them a fee upfront before billing them $30 a month if they don’t cancel. He said that the website failed to fully disclose the terms of the contract to visitors and occasionally promoted auditions that didn’t actually take place. Additionally, the sites advertised for real positions on several employment websites before using a “bait and switch” strategy.
The corporation was sued by the district attorney’s office in San Mateo County Superior Court last month on the grounds that it had broken two laws governing unfair practices and misrepresentation in the state’s business and professions. A $2, 500 fine per victim is assessed for every infraction.
In a ruling handed down on Thursday by Judge Stephen Hall, Igor Reiant’s business was ordered to pay a $45,000 fine to the district attorney’s office and have its president meet with Finney every four months for the following two years to examine consumer complaints the company had received. Additionally, the agency cannot advertise casting call chances “unless true” or charge monthly fees without a client’s permission. Many times, the business double-billed thousands of victims and made it extremely impossible to discontinue the subscription.
According to Finney, the business has practically compensated everyone who complained. However, his administration was concerned that the salespeople were working on commission, not disclosing the complete agreement to actors, or using any measures necessary to close a transaction. The call centers for Casting360 and Talent6 are situated in Moldova, a former member of the Soviet Union. In the USA, the corporation keeps a minor administrative presence.
“Would-be actors need to really make sure that they understand what the relationship is,” said Finney of performers’ interactions with talent agents. “Young people are so star-struck that they just think there is a great opportunity out there.”
On Friday, inquiries to the company’s attorneys seeking comment went unanswered. The business and its president, Igor Reiant, complied with the judge’s orders and agreed to pay the fine.
Why Did 9,000 Porny Spambots Land on This High School Student in San Diego?
A journey through the bizarre underworld populated by spammers, dubious marketers, and artificial intelligence.
Last Thursday at around 5 o’clock, high school student Olivia from San Diego discovered that something unusual was happening with her Twitter account.
She had just received 30 hot profile image followings on the social networking site. She tweeted to her 600 or so followers, “guys wtf 30 PORNSTARS JUST FOLLOWED ME WHATS HAPPENING.”
Her pals began making jokes about her. One person remarked, “I think they want you to join their profession.” It was also a little amusing. Strange but amusing. One of her friends tweeted, “Actually laughing so hard right now [emoji],” to her.
She might be completing her homework one moment and wishing a friend luck in varsity the next. Then she becomes the focal point of this horde of bizarre porn. It resembled the scenario for a recent science fiction film by Steven Spielberg.
Screenshots of Olivia’s account were published. She scribbled in all caps, presumably in ironic protest, “AM I PAYING FOR THIS” and “IS ANYONE ELSE AS CONCERNED AS I AM.”
But perhaps the next big thing in school would be being followed by pornstars? A friend tweeted, “Why aren’t hundreds of porn stars following me.”
But Olivia started to spot certain trends. Almost everyone else the identities were following had been “verified” by Twitter, and each new follower was only following exactly six other users. Numerous the verified were real celebrities.
She updated her Twitter bio to read, “5,000 pornstars follow me and idk what to do.”
Sincerely, what was happening?
One of her new followers, Shantal Roddam (@Allieqtzm), is a good example of this. A “Friendly beer fan” from Butte, Shantal. She was going after:
@KingJames, Lebron James, the NBA star; @ESPN, the world’s top sports network; @MarsPhoenix, a long-dead robot on Mars; @ReutersScience, the news agency; @AlexisMadrigal, your devoted correspondent; and Olivia, a high school student in San Diego.
When it was 8:25 p.m., Olivia could declare, “I have hit 3,000 everyone 3,000 porn stars.”
She passed 4,000 at 9:05. She reached 5,000 at 9:51. She updated her Twitter bio to read, “5,000 pornstars follow me and idk what to do.” (For those who are unfamiliar with acronyms, idk stands for “I don’t know”).
To no one in particular, a boy tweeted that Olivia was “officially famous as fuck wtf.” A different person remarked, “Let’s be honest, we all knew that Olivia was going to be twitter famous from the start.” A third person chimed in, “New game: shoot whenever someone follows Olivia.”
The bios of all the new followers were like terrible Mad Libs for social media wannabes, with names like “Earlene Timperman” and “Valerie Wienandt”: “certified food nerd,” “hardcore social media scholar Bacon ninja,” “typical tv trailblazer Hardcore introvert,” “Bacon specialist Certified organizer,” and “friend of animals everywhere” are just a few of the phrases that describe the author. “Coffee advocate Hipster-friendly analyst,” “coffee enthusiast.”
Bacon ninja, ardent social media expert.
They all came from what appeared to be unrelated cities: Trenton, Fairmont, and Danville. a state never. never a nation. Not a joke ever.
Oh, and none of them had posted anything on Twitter.
Maybe by now you can guess what happened. These “people” were actually automatically produced accounts that someone with some programming experience had made, not actual individuals.
The tens of thousands of new followers Olivia gained came from the same spambot source.
The reason a San Diego high school student suddenly become a spambot magnet remained a mystery.
Now, if you’re reading this news online, it’s likely that you’ve run into spambots or at the very least, the spam that these bots produce.
The bots typically follow extremely well-liked accounts. And they typically arrive in groups of no more than a few dozen, rather than thousands.
The reason a San Diego high school student suddenly became a spambot magnet remained a mystery.
I started looking for patterns among Olivia’s fans.
The first thing I observed was Olivia’s predominance despite the fact that she wasn’t on every bot in the swarm’s follow list. No other account, not even Lebron James’, that I could locate had been attacked so frequently.
When his campaign was accused of purchasing Twitter followers, Newt Gingrich learned that there is an underground business in the creation of bogus accounts. Of course, what people are purchasing are robot-generated accounts designed to give the impression that users are more renowned than they actually are, not genuine people.
Typically, this type of bot only selects the Lebron Jameses, ESPNs, and suggested users on Twitter. But possibly someone tried to add something that certain frequent users would find more sophisticated. Or perhaps the code for “Who should I follow?” contained a problem.
Other types of bots choose who to follow based on the content of their tweets, but even just glancing at a few instances made it obvious that Olivia and the other users these bots were following had no shared interests.
The second thing I noticed was how many golf caddies the spambots were following. That one I couldn’t instantly explain, but bear in mind.
Another example is the story of the nerdy adolescent lad who built a botnet to impress a girl.
The next thing I observed was that Olivia wasn’t the only high schooler from San Diego. The spambot apparently targeted at least three other San Diego high school students, including two that Olivia knows. However, these kids only (at most) attracted a few hundred spambot followers.
All of this information inspired @001010110, one of my followers, to come up with a fantastic new romantic comedy/Nico Muhly opera plot:
Then there is the ‘nerdy adolescent kid creates botnet to impress a girl, follows others to mask his traces’ scenario. In order to prove his worth, the poor child who caddies at the country club falls in love with the wealthy lady whose family is a member.
Which was a great justification in my opinion!
Then, though, the automated tweets began.
It started off as a few here and there, like the early popcorn kernels in a bag.
Most of them started tweeting soon after. A few per bot, but not too many. The messages were being sent to common users worldwide rather than well-known accounts. Typically, they appeared as follows:
Each participant sought to direct people to tweevip.com while the words in the tweet varied from person to person. (Avoid going there.)
According to Tweevip’s IP address, the computer hosting the website is most likely in Roubaix, in northern France, not far from the Belgian border. These excellent websites are also hosted at the same Internet address. Most of them appear to be configured to collect similar kinds of bot-generated traffic (such as vineluv and gramvip, which appear to target Vine and Instagram).
Other spam websites are not recommended.
Tweevip’s goal is to get you to input your name and phone number. When you do, the website texts you saying, “MOVIE EXTRAS WANTED! Earn money by watching movies. All Aesthetics, No Experience Necessary! Please dial 1877-590-5505 to register.
When I called the number, the person who answered the phone confirmed that he was a Casting360.com employee. He was aggressively attempting to sell me their casting services in the meantime.
What is it that they want callers to the number to do? They urge customers to sign up for a 14-day, $1.98 trial that will automatically upgrade to a $34.90 monthly membership.
You can utilize their casting services in return. How reliable or practical are they? I looked up Ridgefield, Washington, which is 25 miles north of Portland, Oregon, and has a population of 5,260. The website identified 25 “entertainment professionals” in the area, practically all of whom go by the title “casting directors.” Three people were listed as the top three results: a man seeking a drummer, a self-employed photographer, and a 16-year-old with “four years experience behind a camera, and editing on both final cut pro, and iMovie.” Hmm. The website doesn’t seem to be a way to enter the field, to be honest.
Google provides the following when you search for Casting 360:
Igor Reiant, the owner of Casting 360, previously managed Talent6, a comparable casting firm that received a $45,000 fraud fine from San Mateo County, as made public by a scam blogger.
Igor Reiant appears to enjoy skiing in Squaw Valley based on his Twitter account. 16 people follow him. He did not answer when I called him to inquire about the marketing strategies used by his business.
The Internet economy is currently in this situation. The two technology businesses that are making billionaires, Twitter and Apple, are at the top of the pack.
The bots are small pieces of code that perform a single task, ceaselessly, and are located at the bottom of the list.
We are all connected to each other, the Apple brand, Google, Twitter, and the bots in between, as well as Olivia, Igor Reiant, LeBron James, and you and I. These connections are odd. A San Diego high school student may feel famous thanks to the same bots that assist con some gullible person who wants to break into acting.
We all have goals with these technological networks. We are all dependent on one another in an odd way. Igor Reiant requires the robots. Igor Reiant must help the bots. Igor Reiant, the robots, and Olivia are all I need. Even if Twitter asserts in regulatory filings that just 5% of their accounts are false, according to an internal examination, we all need to work together. (It should be remembered that the spambot issue used to be much worse.)
The same bots that defraud would-be actors could also make a high school student in San Diego feel famous.
The logic of the bots is still a mystery to humans despite all of our linkages and interdependencies. We know why the bot swarm was sent out by Casting360 or whichever sleazy marketing firm they employed: to attract “customers” and generate revenue. But why did the robots choose to pursue a San Diego woman and several golf caddies?
It would be like attempting to look into a snake’s eyes to attempt to provide a response. Or, as Olivia succinctly put it while describing the existential state of social media, “5,000 pornstars follow me and idk what to do.”
But I’m happy to speculate on the motivation behind the metabot that, with a lot of help from my colleague Ian Bogost, generated all of the spambot accounts.
Here, two things need to be kept in mind.
One is that the metabot’s tools are Twitter API tools, which are the interfaces used by other programs to interact with Twitter. This API enables programmers to perform tasks that are not available to regular users, such as returning a list of everyone that a user is following at once. The metabot, therefore, does not rely just on the tools that come with your phone.
The second point is that Twitter does have staff members tasked with bot detection, and normal users are also now aware of the spambot game. Bots must therefore put some effort into blending in. They must “look” like humans. They have those stupid bios because they have linked together fragments from real bios of other people. They also have those pornographic images for that reason. It has probably been proven in some books on spam best practices that having an attractive avatar picture increases your chance of gaining a follower by X%. Additionally, they seek followers because doing so increases the likelihood that Twitter’s anti-spam algorithms would recognize them as “real” users.
The metabot seeks to make tens of thousands of convincingly false profiles.
Of fact, the metabot has no desire to produce a single phony account that resembles a person. It intends to make tens of thousands of phony accounts that resemble humans in some way. And even though that is what happened, it is aware that it should not overwhelm one user with 10,000 fictitious followers. Instead, the bots should be dispersed among numerous individuals so that nobody becomes concerned that tens of thousands of pornographic spambots are stalking them.
The metabot must therefore devise a method for switching between one group of followers and another group of followers.
We suspect that the metabot initially makes phony accounts that subscribe to the most well-liked feeds. @ESPN and @JimmyFallon appear almost as frequently as Olivia in the hundreds of false accounts I’ve examined, which is probably not surprising given that these are the first two suggestions Twitter makes, as you can see in the snapshot of the new user sign-up to the right.
But keep in mind that the metabot needs to distribute the followers. There must be more people watching than simply Fallon and ESPN.
We suspect that the metabot initially makes phony accounts that subscribe to the most well-liked feeds. @ESPN and @JimmyFallon appear almost as frequently as Olivia in the hundreds of false accounts I’ve examined, which is probably not surprising given that these are the first two suggestions Twitter makes, as you can see in the snapshot of the new user sign-up to the right.
But keep in mind that the metabot needs to distribute the followers. There must be more people watching than simply Fallon and ESPN.
Because of this, even if the bot swarm covers a wide range of topics, we observe clustering in the types of accounts that each given spambot account is following.
In my situation, I was listed among a number of science accounts (as Twitter genuinely suggests me for those who appreciate science). However, there are additional spammers who generally follow hockey accounts, the aforementioned caddy cluster, or a stylish bunch.
Olivia and her friends were correct when they predicted that she would overnight become famous. Simply put, her audience was not human.
Consequently, the metabot has gone viral. Because of who follows you, you get followed.
This propensity explains the odd geographic cluster among high school pupils in San Diego. The bot may have found this small group of San Diego teenagers by following one of those children via an extremely popular account (such, say, @Interscope records, which follows hundreds of thousands of users).
As a part of the invisible non-human web, all of this action would have stayed undetected. However, something went wrong. Olivia found herself in an odd loop for some reason, and the metabot began producing spambots that decided to follow her ceaselessly.
Perhaps a bug started acting up as the metabot reached the San Diego children. She (and everyone else) was followed far more frequently as a result of the positive comments than the negative input did. Because other bots were also following her, the bots followed her. and on it goes.
This is possibly a type of logic we can comprehend: It is the fundamental rationale behind popularity and celebrity. Snooki is receiving attention because she already received attention. Olivia is the center of attention because she previously attracted it.
When Olivia and her pals predicted that she would suddenly become famous, they weren’t mistaken. Simply put, her audience was not human.
Olivia’s follower count was restored to normal by Friday night after all of the accounts had been removed by Twitter’s anti-bot team. I’d rather have a few actual followers who love me than thousands of phony ones, she wrote in a tweet.
Why do people feed their babies lemons, she continued.
Everything returned to normal.
What are your thoughts on Igor Reiant and his companies? Do you think Igor Reiant’s victims got the justice they deserved?
How is this being posted as news, when some of these claims were made back in 2013?