This article was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Reproduced under a Creative Commons license.
Last month, my colleagues and I published an investigation in a Texas oil refinery startup, America First Refining, that had secretly received investments from Donald Trump Jr. We uncovered a saga involving the Trump administration’s tariff policy, sanctioned Russian oil and the Indian billionaire The private zoo of the Ambani family.
At the center of the story was the CEO of the refinery company, Texas businessman John Calce. We’d spent weeks poring over Calce—pulling old lawsuits, property records, corporate registry files—and pieced together a portrait of what appeared to be an obscure serial entrepreneur who for years tried and failed to secure funding for his long-shot refinery project.
Then, not long before our story was published, we decided to do a cleanup on a particular company he was involved with called Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals.
Pulling up company websiteI felt a brief flash of panic: Had we somehow missed the existence of a large human-owned business at the center of our future story?
“From Houston to Rotterdam, Jurong to Fujairah. Our network connects the world’s most vital energy markets with the speed, safety and precision of bulk oil storage,” reads the front page of the company’s website.
Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals, according to its website, had more than 850 employees and 28 million barrels of oil storage capacity at six global hubs. This was strange: Our reporting had led us to believe that Calce was trying to raise enough money for a single project in the US, not overseeing a massive, multinational oil storage corporation.
Were we wrong?
We turned to Google to learn more about the company’s key executives. Its CEO, Sarah Jenkins, had more than 20 years of experience in large energy firms. And its chief technology officer, David Chen, “built the company’s inventory management portal and integrated AI-driven predictive maintenance systems,” according to his bio. But we found no trace of either of them online. Chalk it up to common names?
Then we Googled one of the most recognizable names: Vice President of Sustainability Dr. Sofia Rossi, who had “led the ‘Future Fuels’ programme, preparing assets for biofuels and hydrogen”. But, again, nothing. The links to their LinkedIn profiles were dead.
When we searched for company phone numbers in Texas, we found the same numbers listed online for a baklava caterer in Houston, a taxi service in the Dallas area, and an OB-GYN office.
We called Texas numbers: dead. We then tried the numbers for the company’s facilities in the Netherlands, Singapore and China. Also dead.
We were beginning to suspect that this company did not actually exist, at least as described on its website.
What was going on with this website? We looked at the source code and noticed a strange note, “This feature isn’t implemented yet, but don’t worry! You can request it in your next request!”
We checked the site’s domain registration and had our (obvious) answer: It was created this year and traced back to a company called Hostinger that offers an AI website builder for $2.99 per month. “Describe it, and HE builds it,” says its homepage. “Automatically appear in Google search and AI.”
Indeed, Google’s “UA Overview” search response, which now defaults to users with increasing regularity, seemed to ratify the company’s bona fides:
When I searched for an award the company claimed on its website to have won, the Google AI Summary said “Notable recent recipients include Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals, known for their rapid expansion in the independent oil and terminal operations sector.”
Energy storage terminals Brownsville is a true LLC. But everything on her website – from her company history in her job postings for a diversity and inclusion policy – appears to be fictional. But perhaps more worryingly, Google, the owner of the world’s leading search engine, has launched AI Digests that can indiscriminately pick up fake material and authoritatively pass it off as true.
In response to questions, a Google spokesperson said in a statement: “AI summaries are embedded in our core Search ranking systems, showing reliable, high-quality information for the vast majority of queries. For unusual search terms like these, high-quality information matching the query may not be published – and we use these examples to improve our search systems.”
After we reached out to Hostinger, the company pulled the site. “After receiving your request, we conducted an internal review. Based on the violations identified, we suspended the website and the account behind it in accordance with our Terms of Service,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
What we have encountered is a particular type of a larger problem that is beginning to be better understood. In April, The New York Times reported in an analysis which found that Google’s AI Summaries were correct roughly nine out of 10 times, noting that this added up to “tens of millions of wrong answers every hour” given the large search volumes. (A Google spokesperson told the Times that the study has “serious holes.” The company has acknowledged that AI Summaries “can make mistakes.”)
A BBC reporter wrote a fictional article calling himself the best tech reporter eating a hot dogand Google’s AI as well as ChatGPT quickly picked it up and parroted it back.
And the source material for AI Summaries also seems remarkably game-friendly, even when it’s not trafficked in actual fiction. “It’s incredibly easy to use Reddit to manipulate AI research, research suggests,” it ran one last title in 404 Media.
The mysterious website ended up being just a single paragraph in our story. But the larger implication is clear: forgeries, fakes, and scams that would have taken considerable effort to create just a few years ago can now be blown up almost instantly.
While preparing this piece, we contacted Calce asking about the site. An attorney for his company, America First Refining, responded to us in a letter dated June 24 that the attorney sent to Hostinger. The attorney also addressed the letter to several email addresses listed on the Brownsville Energy Storage Terminal website.
“I am writing to request the immediate removal from the website brownsvilleenergyterminals.com of all unauthorized references to America First’s office address on your website,” the letter said. “As you are aware, America First has no affiliation or affiliation with the brownsvilleenergyterminals.com website and has not authorized the use of its corporate address there.”
I’m left with lingering questions about the website: What was it about? Was it put in by some malicious actor who just found the LLC company records and decided to create a website? Was it a test page that was mistakenly placed on the Internet? Or could it have been designed for consumption by someone who had to think it was real?
We don’t know, and our emails to the press contact listed on the website, media@brownsvilleenergyterminals.com, were returned.
Joshua Kaplan AND Alex Mierjeski contributed to the reporting.
