Victoria crime site uses fake Australian reporter names, owner says

Victoria Crime News credits its articles to a four-person team of specialist crime reporters who have filed more than 250 stories since February 2026. In a phone interview, Mr Winder said he employed workers in the Philippines whose stories were attributed to fictitious reporters with 'Aussie names' on the website's editorial team. The site carries a disclosure saying 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'.

Momoko Fujita, a senior lecturer at the University of Canberra who studies how digital platforms influence behaviour, said the site was an example of 'pink slime' journalism: websites that present themselves as legitimate news outlets but publish AI-enhanced content to influence audiences or generate revenue. 'If it's not fake, then why would they put fake names?' she said.

Mr Winder said he set up the website to raise awareness of crime in his state and push the government to 'do more', and that several attempted burglaries he had suffered partly motivated him. He is also director of a company specialising in home security installations.

The ABC's investigation found stories containing passages very close to reporting by The Age and ABC News, AI-generated images bearing little resemblance to the places they claimed to show, and some images unrelated to their headlines. A story about the firebombing of a grocer in Melbourne's Deer Park used an AI-generated image that showed little resemblance to the shopfront photographed after the blaze. Cold case reports also contained significant errors: a story on Kade Hall said he was last seen in 2014, while Victoria Police records say he was last seen in 2002, and the site described Shannon McCormack, a man fatally assaulted in Melbourne's CBD in 2002, as a woman who disappeared in the early 2000s.

Mr Winder said he was surprised to learn of the inaccuracies, that he would raise them with his Philippines-based team and correct them, and that it was not his intention for the site to plagiarise original reporting. '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 was previously operated by Victoria Police, which used it for official announcements until 2019, before it was acquired by Mr Winder. VCN began publishing in February 2026. Tests by ABC News Verify found Google's Gemini and X's Grok recommended the site as a reliable source of information. Dr Fujita said she was unsurprised, because search engines use AI and the site's structure and keywords were optimised for AI search engines. She added that the website's selective editorial focus suggested there was a certain agenda behind the operation.