#tokillamoney by Kemi Adetiba highlights how AI is used in FRAUD/ 419

#jaiyeorie

Kemi Adetiba’s crime thriller To Kill a Monkey, streaming on Netflix, doesn’t just follow a man pulled into internet crime — it names a modern fear. In the series, struggling programmer Efemini “Efe” Edewor is lured into a cybercrime world where he uses his tech skills to build artificial intelligence-enabled scams for a criminal ring. The show paints a picture of how someone can go from trying to survive to using AI to engineer fraud that feels almost real, capturing financial data and outsmarting victims in ways that feel chillingly plausible. This isn’t just imaginative storytelling — it connects to a broader digital truth about trust, technology, and how easy it has become to manufacture deception for profit. 

What makes this narrative resonate is not the crime itself, but how close it feels to what’s happening outside the screen. Real-world regulators are already warning that scammers are using AI-generated videos, deepfakes, and fake endorsements to lure unsuspecting investors with promises of high returns or celebrity backing — tactics that are harder to spot and easier to believe than ever before. Authorities in Nigeria’s financial sector have cautioned that these schemes exploit the credibility gap created by technology, making fraud appear legitimate until it’s too late. This is exactly the kind of shadow world To Kill a Monkey reflects — one where desperation, innovation, and moral compromise collide. 

In showing us a protagonist transformed by AI-assisted crime, the story doesn’t just entertain — it asks a deeper question: when technology can build illusions as easily as it builds solutions, whose responsibility is it to teach us how to see the difference?

 ✍️ 👀 ☝️👆 📎