Marketplace Tech AI makes it easier to code websites — including ones that scam consumers
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Feb 23, 2026 Megan McCarty Carino, a Marketplace reporter who investigates tech and the digital economy, recounts encountering an AI-made fake website. She explains how AI makes building convincing sites easy. The conversation covers how scams scale cheaply, why niche brands are targeted, how ads and search hide fraud, and how trust signals and URLs can betray imposters.
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Encountering A Convincing Fake Davines Website
- Megan McCarty Carino found a fake Davines site in Google results that looked nearly identical to the real mobile site.
- The scam site had no misspellings or janky graphics, tricking her until she checked the URL at the last moment.
AI Lowers The Cost To Scale Scam Websites
- AI coding agents make it cheap and quick to generate dozens of official-looking scam sites per day.
- Charles Henderson and Megan explain that lower costs raise scammers' ROI so impersonation attacks can scale broadly.
Niche Brands Suddenly Face Large-Scale Impersonation
- Smaller and niche brands are now targeted because scammers can mass-produce impostor storefronts.
- Zach Edwards notes brands that never faced threats suddenly get dozens of customers reporting large losses.