From Sextortion to Crypto Crime, FRONTLINE’s Season Premiere Investigates Online Scams with the AP

Millions of Americans have fallen victim to a growing epidemic of online scams — from sextortion schemes aimed at teens, to crypto investment scams targeting seniors.

What’s behind the rise of these scams, and why do so few people ever get their money back? 

FRONTLINE and The Associated Press have spent more than a year investigating the shadowy world of online scams, and how this global criminal industry is stealing billions of dollars each year. The resulting documentary, Scammed, kicks off FRONTLINE’s 45th season of investigative documentaries on PBS. Premiering Tues., Sept. 29, on PBS stations at a special time, 9/8c, Scammed will also be available to stream online. 

From an award-winning team that includes director Peter Klein and reporters Erika Kinetz, Juliet Linderman and Martha Mendoza, the documentary goes inside the explosive growth of an industry powered in many cases by organized crime, trafficked labor, American technology, and, increasingly, AI — and how governments and law enforcement have tried to keep pace.

“It’s being done at a scale that we have never seen and never even anticipated,” Erin West, a former U.S. prosecutor who worked on a special unit with the FBI and Secret Service focused on cybercrime, says in the documentary.