Around the world, unsuspecting people are unknowingly getting sucked into a new and growing type of organized criminal enterprise: vehicle transportation fraud and theft.
Crooks use email phishing, fraudulent paperwork and other tactics to impersonate legitimate transportation companies and get hired to deliver a luxury vehicle. They divert the shipment away from its intended destination before using a mix of technology, computer skills and old-school techniques to erase traces of the vehicle’s original ownership and registration. In some cases, by the time the rightful owner realizes the car is missing, the car has been resold or is out of the country.
The nationwide epidemic of vehicle transportation fraud and theft has remained under the radar, even though it has rocked the industry over the past two years. MIT Technology Review More than a dozen cases involving high-end vehicles were identified, court records were obtained and law enforcement, brokers, drivers and victims in multiple states were interviewed to learn how transportation fraud is wreaking havoc across the country. Read the full story.
-Craig Silverman
Scientists are using AI to discover antibiotics almost everywhere
Antimicrobial resistance is a big problem. Infections caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses that have developed ways to evade treatment are now associated with more than 4 million deaths per year, and a recent analysis estimates that number could exceed 8 million by 2050.
Bioengineer and computational biologist César de la Fuente has a plan. His team at the University of Pennsylvania is training AI tools to search far and wide the genome for peptides with antibiotic properties. Their vision is to assemble those peptides – molecules made of 50 amino acids linked together – into a variety of configurations, some of which have never been seen in nature. They hope the results may protect the body from germs that counter traditional treatments — and their search has unearthed promising candidates in unexpected places. Read the full story.
-Stephen Ornes
Both of these stories are from the next print issue of MIT Technology Review Magazine, which is all about crime. If you haven’t already, Subscribe now To receive future points once landed.
