A leading news website has removed dozens of articles after apparently being conned by bogus “journalists”—who may have been assisted in their deception by AI.
Business Insider quietly deleted at least 34 articles written under 13 different bylines after admitting it had published two articles written by a phony “journalist” who used the fake name “Margaux Blanchard.”
Now it has deleted dozens more written by “Tim Stevensen,” “Nate Giovanni,” “Nathan Giovanni,” “Amarilis J. Yera,” “Onyeka Nwelue,” “Alice Amayu,” “Mia Brown,” “Tracy Miller,” “Margaret Awano,” “Erica Mayor,” “Kalmar Theodore,” “Lauren Bennett,” “Louisa Eunice,” and “Alyssa Scott.” All were replaced with a single-sentence note saying they “didn’t meet Business Insider’s standards.”
A similar note has replaced each erased essay on Business Insider’s website. / Business Insider
A review by the Daily Beast has found the articles that Business Insider deleted were all “personal essays,” for which the outlet pays between $200 and $300. The first was published in April 2024 and the most recent in August, days before the “Margaux Blanchard” scam came to light.
Among the topics the apparently bogus “essayists” covered were, “I’m 38 and live in a retirement village”; “Costco Next is the chain’s best-kept secret that’s free for members. I’ve already saved thousands of dollars using it.”; “I had a meltdown in front of my 5 kids.”; and—possibly ironically—“I was accepted into a well-regarded graduate program. I turned down the offer because AI is destroying my desired industry.”
The Daily Beast’s review found several red flags within the since-deleted essays that suggest the writing did not reflect the authors’ lived experiences. This included contradictory information in separate essays by the same author, such as changing the gender and ages of their supposed children, and author-contributed photos that reverse-image searches confirm were pulled from elsewhere online.
The author of an erased essay claimed she purchased this house an hour outside Houston in 2019 for $245,000, when she was 24. A reverse image search revealed that the home was being marketed this summer as a new build with an asking price of $379,000 in Dallas. / Wayback Machine
The author “Tim Stevensen” claimed in one piece to have two daughters and a son, but four months later, he had “sons.” “Stevensen” was possibly the most prolific and contradictory of the “essayists.” In seven articles he detailed how he had met his wife eight years ago; that he and his wife had children in their twenties; that he had worked 20-hour shifts for years; that he had been a high-school teacher for a decade before recently quitting to be a freelance writer; that he had “unpaid bills”; and that he and his wife wagered $5,000 for a weight-loss challenge.
Another article by “Stevensen” included a photo that he had supplied, which claimed to show him and his daughters. A reverse-image search revealed that the photo was of a man named Stowe Gregory, who wrote a personal essay months earlier for the i newspaper in the U.K. about his love for his step-daughters. The only Tim Stevensen listed in the U.S. did not respond to the Daily Beast, but is not a former high-school teacher.
The author “Tim Stevensen” submitted this photo to Business Insider and claimed it was him with his two daughters. The same image was published by a London newspaper months prior, having been submitted by a man named Gregory Stowe. / Wayback Machine
An internal note to staff from the site’s editor-in-chief, Jamie Heller, stated that the questionable essays were removed “due to concerns about the authors’ identity or veracity.” Heller’s note, first obtained by Semafor, said no articles written by its staff had been affected by Tuesday’s purge. The internal communication added that the site’s verification protocols have since been “bolstered.” A spokesperson for Business Insider declined to comment further, but a company source said the site publishes around 70,000 articles a year, making the deleted articles a tiny proportion of its output.
Jamie Heller became editor-in-chief of Business Insider on Sept. 9, 2024. She had previously worked at the Wall Street Journal. / Joy Malone / Getty Images
Heller became editor-in-chief of the site—owned by German media company Axel Springer, which also owns Politico—in September 2024, when the apparent cons were already underway, although the majority were published after her appointment.
It is unclear whether or to what extent the deleted articles had used AI to generate their content. The Daily Beast used AI detection software and found that the nixed essays did not register as being written word-for-word by AI.
Mathias Döpfner runs the German-based Axel Springer. / Matthias Nareyek/Getty
However, the articles are littered with unlikely facts and odd phrases, which could point to the use of generative AI. One “writer” claimed she lived in Houston, Texas, and that it took an hour without a car to get to “nearby cities,” another described retirement as “glory days,” and one wrote about “apple pie” and “diners” being part of Australian life. One claimed to have been a teacher who was “summoned” to speak to the principal and told he had been “chosen to represent the school in Canada, which meant I would be away from my family for six to 12 months.”
The Daily Beast was unable to reach any of the supposed authors—some of whom have been published elsewhere, including one who claims to live in both the United Kingdom and Appalachia—for comment, leaving the motive for an apparent con a mystery. At least three of the bylines also appear on articles in writersweekly.com, offering tips on how to become a freelance writer.
“Nate Giovanni” had a whirlwind of personal essays published by Business Insider in the past year, as his since-deleted author profile shows. Another erased essay was also published on Business Insider under the name “Nathan Giovanni.” / Wayback Machine
Author “Nate Giovanni,” also credited “Nathan Giovanni,” had at least five deleted essays. In a December essay about convincing his wife to have a third child in their forties, “Giovanni” wrote that he had two daughters, Leila and Sophia, and a 2-year-old son named Mason. In an essay published in March, he had two sons, and his wife was at home with a newborn. In May, he wrote that he and his wife had been traveling the world as house sitters for the last two years, including a two-week stay at a “Rustic Villa in Tuscany” and trips to destinations like Charleston, Oregon, New Mexico, New York, Australia, Canada, and Merida, Mexico. His grasp of geography seemed odd.
“Some memorable countries we’ve visited include London, for a quick three-day experience with a house cat. We made it to the London Bridge,” one article states. By July, “Giovanni” was no longer a world traveler: He had quit being a high school English teacher and was in the aftermath of losing his job at a failed startup.
“Amarilis J. Yera” wrote last month about buying a home about an hour outside of Houston six years earlier, when she was 24. However, a submitted photo of the home’s exterior was that of a new-build property that was sold this summer in Dallas, over a month before “Yera’s” essay was published. The essay included photos that were supposedly of the home’s interior, but a reverse image search showed that identical photos were posted months earlier in a Kenya-based Facebook group.
The essay included a selfie submitted by the author. An editor with an almost identical name, Amaralis Yera, lives in Puerto Rico. She could not be reached for comment, but her professional headshot on LinkedIn shows that they are not the same person. Records show there is no other “Amaralis Yera” living in the United States.
The author “Amarilis J. Yera” tried to pass off the kitchen on the left, pulled from a Kenyan Facebook group, as being the kitchen of her non-existent Texas home. The actual kitchen for the house that she claimed was hers—which sold in July—can be seen on the right. / Wayback Machine/Realtor.com
Another author was listed as “Onyeka Nwelue,” the same name as a Nigerian-born author who went viral in 2023 for falsely claiming he was a professor at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England. The bogus professor himself then claimed that other scammers have used his identity and photos.
In her note to staff, Heller said the internal probe was launched after trade newspaper Press Gazette revealed that two Business Insider essays published in April—written by a “Margaux Blanchard”—were “likely” filled with made-up anecdotes that were AI-generated and that “Blanchard” was fake. The emergence of generative AI appears to have led to a spike in articles being published under bogus names.
Five other outlets, including WIRED, were duped by “Margaux Blanchard,” Press Gazette reported. The writers’ true identity remains unknown.
