Website reporting on crime in Victoria staffed by workers in Philippines

The director of a home security business has admitted to paying people in the Philippines to create stories about crime in Victoria for a news website he owns.

The stories on Victoria Crime News are credited to a fictional team of local Australian reporters.

The website has been recommended by AI chatbots as a reliable source of news despite some articles containing glaring errors.

The director of a website that reports news stories on Victorian crime has admitted its local team of reporters does not exist and that he uses workers in the Philippines.

Victoria Crime News (VCN) credits its stories to a four-person team of specialist crime reporters who have filed over 250 articles since February 2026.

But when ABC NEWS Verify spoke to its owner, Craig Winder, he admitted his team was not local at all.

"I have a team of writers over in the Philippines … I just tell them to not write anything incriminating."

The site features stories containing glaring errors and AI-generated photos.

Tests conducted by ABC NEWS Verify of prominent chatbots have found it is being recommended as a reliable source of information by Google's Gemini and X's Grok.

The site is an example of so-called "pink slime" journalism, according to Momoko Fujita, a senior lecturer at the University of Canberra, who researches how digital platforms and media influence people's behaviour.

Pink slime refers to websites that purport to publish legitimate news but instead publish AI-enhanced content for the purpose of influencing audiences or generating revenue.

"If it's not fake, then why would they put fake names?" she said.

VCN claims its "editorial team may use generative-AI tools as part of research, headline drafting or copy editing", but assures readers that every article is written by a "named human reporter".

Over the phone, Mr Winder provided more detail on the VCN's human reporters, saying he actually employed a roster of workers based in the Philippines who filed stories attributed to fictitious reporters with "Aussie names" listed on the website's editorial team.

Mr Winder said he had "changed a lot of staff over the last three years" owing to resignations or poor performance.

When pressed by ABC NEWS Verify whether it was deceptive to use fake bios for his Philippines journalists, he said: "I suppose it is a bit deceptive, to be honest, just to be black and white."

Mr Winder told ABC NEWS Verify he set up the website to raise awareness of crime in his state and compel the government to "do more" to combat crime.

He is also the director of a company specialising in home security installations.

Mr Winder said he has been a victim of several attempted burglaries which partly motivated him to create a news website focusing on reporting crime in his state.

Some of the news stories are factually incorrect or show indications of being AI-enhanced rewrites of stories first published by news outlets such as The Age and ABC News.

This includes the use of near-identical passages and VCN's inclusion of AI-generated images for some stories.

Some AI-generated images accompanying stories show little resemblance to the locations they purport to show.

A VCN image accompanying a story on the firebombing of a grocer in Melbourne's Deer Park, for instance, shows little resemblance to the actual shopfront, which was photographed following the blaze as part of the ABC's reporting.

A handful of stories are also accompanied by images that appear to have no relevance whatsoever.

Other stories contain glaring factual errors.

VCN's story on the cold case homicide of Kade Hall claims Mr Hall was "last seen in 2014".

Details openly available on the Victoria Police website state that Mr Hall was last seen in 2002 when his body, which had sustained fatal gunshot wounds, was found in bushland near Kalorama in Victoria.

Other cold cases featured on the VCN website contain significant factual errors, such as the murder of Shannon McCormack, a man who was fatally assaulted in Melbourne's CBD in 2002 by an unknown assailant.

His case on the VCN website describes him as a female who was last seen in the early 2000s before mysteriously disappearing.

Mr Winder said he was surprised to learn about inaccuracies in articles on his website, telling ABC NEWS Verify that he would raise it with his team in the Philippines and correct any inaccuracies.

He said it was not his intention for the website to plagiarise original reporting by real reporters.

"I never want to take away from proper, true journalism and journalists, and I never want to take their information research away from them," he said.

The site's domain address was previously operated by the Victorian Police Force, which used it to publish official police announcements until 2019.

It was later acquired by Mr Winder, who used the domain to launch VCN, which started publishing stories in February 2026.

Dr Fujita agreed it was concerning the site was being recommended by AI chatbots, but she was unsurprised.

"[The chatbots] recommended this as a reliable source because … search engines use AI today.

"The way this website is structured, and the kind of keywords they use, is optimised for AI search engines."

She added the website's selective editorial focus "suggests there is [a] certain agenda behind this operation".