A wire transfer originates at a bank in the United Arab Emirates, routes through a correspondent bank in Europe and lands at an American financial institution as what appears to be a routine commercial payment. The compliance team at the receiving bank sees a company with clean corporate filings, a beneficial owner whose documents check out, and a payment from a jurisdiction that carries no sanctions risk. Nothing triggers a flag. On the other end of that transaction is the Iranian government, and the identity documents underpinning the shell company that sent it were assembled from stolen Social Security numbers purchased on a dark web market six weeks earlier.

I spend my days inside the fraud networks that make operations like this possible, monitoring dark web markets, Telegram channels, document forgery platforms and the facilitator networks that handle logistics on the ground. Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China are all running operations working to overcome the defenses of American institutions right now. The machinery they rely on is more visible than most people assume, if you know where to look.

Every one of these operations starts in the same place: underground markets selling stolen identity components. Social Security numbers, dates of birth, address histories, account credentials, all harvested from data breaches, packaged, and priced by freshness and geographic origin. Russia supplies more of this raw material than any other country, through infostealer malware that captures everything typed or stored on a victim’s computer and quietly sends it to collection servers for sorting and resale.

STOLEN IDS SOLD FOR ‘HAPPY MEAL’ PRICES FUEL BILLIONS IN US BENEFIT FRAUD

One of the marketplaces I monitor, a Telegram channel called “Karma Fullz,” is run by Russian-speaking actors and sells the identities of former legal immigrants to the United States, bundled with associated bank accounts and established credit histories. Buyers use them to incorporate shell businesses and defraud financial institutions and government programs.

Another market I tracked, “South Park BA Logs,” sells compromised U.S. bank account credentials bundled with session cookies, browser fingerprints and linked email access. Between March 2023 and January 2026, in a paper I recently published, I identified 1,210 listings on that single channel, representing an estimated $152 million in accessible financial exposure.

China’s contribution to this supply came in a single, devastating operation. In 2015, Chinese state hackers breached the Office of Personnel Management and walked out with 21.5 million federal employee records: security clearance files, psychological evaluations, financial histories, foreign contacts. An identity built from OPM material can do more than open a bank account. It can clear a background check, survive a hiring process at a sensitive institution, and accumulate access quietly for years. That data is still circulating more than a decade later.

WHY LAST YEAR’S BREACH IS THIS YEAR’S IDENTITY FRAUD

This is the foundation that everything else rests on. What each government builds on top of it varies, but the raw material is shared.

The wire transfer I opened with illustrates a vulnerability that runs through the entire correspondent banking system. Each institution in a multi-bank chain sees only its own segment of the transaction, and Iran has engineered a sanctions evasion architecture around that structural blind spot.

IRAN MOVES HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN CRYPTO DURING NATIONWIDE INTERNET BLACKOUT, REPORT REVEALS

The front companies populating these chains carry nominee directors on their corporate filings and beneficial owners whose identities were fabricated from the same dark web supply described above. Every time a new sanctions designation lands, the structure reconstitutes: different shell companies, different names, different routing that pushes the Iranian connection one layer further from view.

The same technique defeats investment screening. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) reviews foreign acquisitions for national security risks, but its process depends on accurate disclosure of who is behind a transaction. When the beneficial owners are concealed behind shell companies staffed with synthetic identities, the Chinese state affiliation that would trigger scrutiny never surfaces in the filing, and the investment clears while the access it provides compounds over time.

The Anzu Robotics case illustrates how this logic extends beyond finance: according to court filings, Anzu marketed itself as an independent American drone company while relying on hardware, firmware and software tied to the Chinese manufacturer DJI, with the foreign affiliations layered beneath intermediary corporate structures.

NORTH KOREAN HACKERS USE AI TO FORGE MILITARY IDS

The most significant operational shift I have tracked over the past two years is the growth of facilitator networks based inside the United States, particularly those supporting North Korea’s IT worker program.

North Korean operatives apply for remote positions at American companies using identities stitched together from stolen Social Security numbers and credentials pulled from breached databases. They pass technical interviews, start on time, draw legitimate salaries. In one case reported by the Department of Justice, an overseas IT worker landed a remote software engineering job with falsified documents and funneled more than $58,000 in wages through intermediary accounts before the fraud was discovered.

THEY WERE FORCED TO SCAM OTHERS WORLDWIDE; NOW THOUSANDS ARE DETAINED ON THE BURMESE BORDER

In another, conspirators used a single stolen identity to manufacture fraudulent driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, placed workers at two separate U.S. companies, and routed over $150,000 in combined wages to co-conspirators.

After a wave of federal indictments raised awareness of the program, the operation adapted. The regime shifted toward American intermediaries who receive company-issued laptops at their home addresses, manage the technical infrastructure that makes an overseas worker appear to be logging in locally, and route salary payments through accounts they control. Federal prosecutors have begun charging these facilitators, but the networks they serve continue to operate.

What makes the facilitator layer so consequential is that it converts a foreign intelligence operation into a domestic insider threat, one that moves through the same hiring pipelines every American company uses for its remote workforce.

AI DEEPFAKE ROMANCE SCAM STEALS WOMAN’S HOME AND LIFE SAVINGS

Iran-linked networks have developed their own form of domestic reach through “pig butchering” scams, cultivating fraudulent romantic and investment relationships on dating apps and social media, then using AI-powered chatbots and fake cryptocurrency platforms to drain their victims’ savings. Some proceeds from these schemes are believed to fund Iranian state-aligned activities.

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The operational methods described here expose the depths and sophistication state actors will go to in efforts to leverage the American financial system for illicit purposes. Sanctions screening catches known names, but a nominee director whose identity was purchased and assembled last month has never appeared on any watchlist.

Employment verification checks documents, but a forged driver’s license from the same production pipeline that made the last one an employer flagged six months ago is indistinguishable from the real thing. Investment screening depends on disclosure, but a beneficial owner, hiding behind three layers of shell companies, has no intention of volunteering the foreign government standing behind the transaction.

The machinery I watch operate every day exists to make it as hard as possible for financial systems and processes to detect. The longer this fraudulent infrastructure can stay in the shadows, the more likely it is that funds will be offshored, paychecks clear, or access to sensitive systems has been secured.

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There’s a revolution underway in American education, and First Lady Melania Trump and the White House are leading the way.

They’re taking America’s dismal reading and education numbers head-on, as well as the challenge of getting our children ready for the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

Melania Trump launched her “Foster the Future” summit on March 24, to highlight how AI can expand children’s opportunities as a learning tool rather than as a threat or a crutch.

Among the leading attendees was the CEO of Alpha Schools, MacKenzie Price. Alpha Schools is a private company establishing schools across the country, working to encourage children to see AI as their partner and guide in learning, as well as supporting the key “life skills” needed to live a full and productive life.

FIRST LADY MELANIA TRUMP: AI COULD IMPROVE TEACHING AND HELP DELIVER A WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION TO OUR CHILDREN

As fears grow that AI may be taking over our culture as well as our economy; and that our kids may not be equipped to deal with the challenges AI will pose; the White House needs to know it has a powerful ally in the educational movement that’s sweeping the country right now.

That movement embodies the reasoning and understanding future generations will need to protect themselves from manipulation and misinformation, as well as to prosper, in an AI-dominated world.

Called the Classical Education movement, it is being led by teachers, educators, parents and philosophers who are fed up with our schools becoming indoctrination factories for socialism. And unlike education advocates on the left, they are committed to advancing the interests of every child — rich and poor, and from every ethnicity and background — as well as the advancing the future of Western civilization itself.

WHY A CLASSICAL EDUCATION MAY BE THE KEY TO HUMANITY’S FUTURE IN THE AI ERA

Classical education is a content-rich approach to learning, emphasizing the development of wisdom and virtue through the study of the liberal arts, starting with grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and expanding to history and great literature.

This is the curriculum that has supported Western and Judeo-Christian civilization for thousands of years. Rather than a scatter-shot system of superficial electives or an overfocus on skills for job training or professional career preparation, Classical education rests on a bedrock of traditional academic subjects and the Great Books. It seeks to educate the whole child and cultivate an appetite for lifelong learning; build a deep respect for traditional principles of right and wrong; and teach the importance of citizenship and leadership.

Classical education upholds the saying of the Greek philosopher Epictetus, that “Only the educated are free.” It believes education must be about teaching children to appreciate the good, the true and the beautiful, and the best of what America and Western civilization has to offer.

SCHOOL CHOICE IS BOOMING AND FAMILIES ARE WINNING AS THE EDUCATION CARTEL CRUMBLES

There are currently over 1,500 classical education schools (public, private and charter) in the United States serving roughly 700,000 students as of 2024. And the movement is experiencing rapid growth, with over 250 new schools opening since 2020.

From early learners up to university students, this private initiative has filled the educational gap left by government schools and their teachers unions, where students are too often denied actual learning, and teachers use the classroom to advance their own political agenda.

Instead of indoctrinating our children with ideological and agenda-based material, classical education strives to teach the child how, as opposed to what, to think.

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If there are indeed any skills that can prepare younger generations for the future, and can supplement and support the most advanced classroom technologies, including the use of AI, they are the time-honored principles of classical education.

We know Alpha Schools is taking a revolutionary approach to the school day with accelerated learning with AI as a guide for looking more deeply into subjects of interest such as history and geometry. Then afternoons are dedicated to “life skills,” from riding a bike (for the youngest) to how to manage a bank account, and even how to start a business (for the oldest).

Reading, writing, and reasoning — the key ingredients in the classical education curriculum — are as essential to leading a strong and happy life, as financial investment or running an Airbnb. So why not include “life skills” such as learning the principles of grammar and rhetoric as generations of students have done? Why not study the timeless principles of Plato, Aristotle and our greatest Judeo-Christian thinkers, as well as great American writers such as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane and E.B. White, in the curriculum for getting our children ready to meet the technological world to come?

In short, classical education offers a major opportunity for Fostering the Future, and the rest of us, to see an AI-dominated world more optimistically — and to see America’s children as our greatest intellectual asset.

Beth Herman is a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Education Freedom Center. She is a school docent at The National Gallery of Art and is completing her degree in Classical Education at the University of Dallas. 

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As Route 66 prepares to celebrate 100 years since its creation, the Route 66 Commission in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is already looking ahead to the next century.

When the sun goes down in Tulsa, bright neon signs light up the historic highway along the city’s 28-mile stretch of Route 66.

Michael Wallis, founder of the Route 66 Alliance and known as the voice of the Sheriff in the Disney-Pixar movie “Cars,” has spent years driving, studying and exploring Route 66.

“We think of it as this winding museum,” he tells FOX from his Tulsa home, just a block from the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza. “This is the home of Cyrus Stevens Avery, the Father of Route 66.” 

ROUTE 66 SPURS TOURISM IN HISTORICAL SMALL TOWNS

Route 66 is known around the world as the “Main Street of America,” highlighting an integral part of westward expansion in U.S. history.

“It’s a way of really going deep into America, and getting to know the heart of it,” Spanish traveler Ignacio Casares said while driving the route with a group of friends in a rented RV.

In the second half of the 20th century, the interstate system expanded across the US. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials later voted to remove Route 66 from the national highway system.

Wallis said he wanted to help inspire a new future for Tulsa’s section of Route 66.

“I knew the road was still there, more than 85% of it, you can still drive. So I was wary of hearing that in the past tense,” Wallis said. 

ROUTE 66 AT 100: DOOCY KICKS OFF MASSIVE ROAD TRIP

But several businesses along Tulsa’s stretch of the historic route struggled after the highway was decommissioned.

“When I was born, this was an area in Tulsa that most Tulsans weren’t proud of,” said Julia Figueroa, store manager at Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios.

Figueroa’s shop is one of the most eclectic and vibrant stops along Route 66 in Tulsa, located in the Meadow Gold District. The owner brought in giant fiberglass statues to help attract visitors to the area.

To draw more visitors, the Tulsa Route 66 Commission launched a matching grant program for businesses.

“We formed a neon sign grant,” said Ken Busby, chair of the Tulsa Route 66 Commission.

The grant helped businesses buy new neon signs or restore old ones for advertising.

“Neon was the first — was the first advertising on the road,” Busby said. “And that’s how drivers going across this little two-lane road across America found a vacancy, a restaurant or whatever.”

CRUISES STILL SEE BUSY SUMMER SEASON AMID OUTBREAK

Busby said there are now 84 neon signs along Tulsa’s 28 miles of Route 66.

“You just see all these neon signs popping up, and you’re just like in a big city of neon,” he said.

Many locals told FOX they love the neon signs, while businesses are looking toward a brighter future.

“I’ll drive there at night just to watch people taking pictures at night and enjoying the neon,” Figueroa said.

Busby said the next step is proposing a matching grant for businesses to restore building facades.