🦞 The $400K lobster heist you need to hear about

Happy Sunday, {{first_name | friend}}. If you’ve already asked Siri for the weather or begged Alexa to turn down the volume, you’ve spoken to your house today. But before digital assistants went mainstream, their voices had humble beginnings. Take Siri. The original voice wasn’t AI. 

🎤 It was a real woman recording snippets in her studio back in 2005. The twist? She had no idea what her voice would become. What did she think she was recording for? A) A bank’s automated phone system, B) A top secret military GPS project, C) A talking fish decoration or D) A futuristic phone. Take a guess, the answer is waiting at the end (probably to say, “I didn’t quite catch that”).

📺 Okay, real talk: Scrolling Netflix for 45 minutes to rewatch The Office again? We've all been there. But hey, if you're going to stare at a screen anyway, might as well learn something useful. I've got a YouTube channel packed with tech tips that don't make your eyes glaze over. Come hang out, it's like this newsletter, but with my actual face talking at you. — Kim

📬 Someone forwarded this to you? Smart friend. Want it in your own inbox instead of waiting on them? Sign up here, it's free and I promise not to spam you.

December 2025. A warehouse in Taunton, Massachusetts. A truck driver walks in with perfectly executed paperwork and all the right answers. He’s picking up 40,000 pounds of premium lobster meat, 20 tons destined for Costco stores in time for Christmas.

The freight broker checked everything. Top-rated trucking company. Legitimate emails. Solid safety record. The driver loads up $400,000 worth of lobster and drives away. In a few hours, the warehouse manager is alarmed when truck’s GPS goes dark. All the phone numbers are dead. The lobster vanishes.

Here’s the kicker. That driver was an impostor. The trucking company didn’t exist. The whole thing was a digital con.

These criminals hit the same warehouse 10 days earlier using the identical playbook. That time? Crab. Then they came back for Round 2. That’s organized crime with a shopping list.

Here’s how they pulled it off:

Cargo theft happens multiple times daily. Electronics. Pharmaceuticals. Designer goods. If it’s valuable and ships on a truck, someone’s figured out how to steal it with a a fake $10 domain, burner phone numbers and a laptop.

This is the same scam hitting real estate closings and invoice payments. Criminals impersonate someone you trust, get you to lower your guard, then they walk away with everything. In this case, it happened to be lobster meat instead of your down payment.

Whether you’re shipping cargo or paying a contractor, IDs are easy to fake, especially in this AI age. If you get an email changing payment instructions or pickup details, stop. Don’t reply. Call the number you already have on file (not the one in the message) and verify with a human.

Look for tiny email differences. One character off? That’s your red flag. And if that seafood deal seems too good to be true, it probably came off the back of a truck. Literally. 

🦀 Know a business owner who needs to see this? Forward them this email. It might save them a fortune. Or use the icons below to post this story on your social media. Don’t be shellfish, share the knowledge!

Steve found $22,000, using one tip from the show. I share the exact website, so you can check for your name. I also reveal the dark psychology of bad customer service and how to legally get expensive software for free.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

📖 Holy code, Batman! Ever wonder who actually wrote the Bible? Researchers fed the Hebrew Bible to an AI trained to detect linguistic fingerprints, and turns out, it takes a digital prophet to spot the truth. They found three distinct writing styles across the Enneateuch, confirming what scholars suspected: multiple authors, one bestseller. The AI even flagged oddball chapters that don’t match any known style. Guess you could say the Bible got peer-reviewed. Divine inspiration, human dictation, now with data to back it up. I thought that was interesting.

Sole searching: Silicon Valley startups are telling employees to ditch their shoes at the door. Really. AI companies worth billions are handing out slippers, calling it the “pajama economy in action.” Huh? Some love the cozy vibes. Others? Sneezing emojis and hygiene panic. One CEO says it makes the office feel like home. Spoiler: It doesn’t.

💰 Gotta flip ’em all: WWE wrestler Logan Paul says forget stocks, invest in nostalgia. He’s auctioning off his $5.3M Pokémon card, the rarest in the world, hoping someone catches it for $12M. Not me. You won’t find a licensed professional telling you to ditch index funds for Pikachu. Still, one person’s cardboard is another’s retirement plan.

Hot and bothered: Charging your phone overnight under your pillow? Apple says stop. It can overheat, spark and even cause fires, especially with sketchy off-brand chargers. Keep your device ventilated, ditch the mystery cables, and for the love of lithium, don’t sleep on your charger. We all need our beauty rest. Just preferably not the eternal kind.

Brain power: Elon says Neuralink’s scaling up for 2026, mass-producing brain chips and automating surgeries like it’s a Tesla factory for thoughts. Twelve people with paralysis already have the implant, and they’re gaming, browsing, posting on X using pure brain power. Incredible for accessibility. Also maybe a Black Mirror episode waiting to happen. Let’s just hope your intrusive thoughts stay offline. No one needs to read your 3 a.m. shower arguments.

🩺 Dr. Google, you’re fired: Google’s AI Overviews are dishing out sketchy health advice. A study found 70% of AI health summaries posed some risk, with advice ranging from oversimplified to downright dangerous. Google pulls from all over the web, including Reddit jokes, then packages its findings as fact. One gem? Drink urine for kidney stones. Suddenly WebMD’s “it’s probably cancer” diagnosis doesn’t sound so bad. I know, sometimes my jokes have no filter.

Super-smart eighth grader Gagan from Washington calls in asking how to start his own tech newsletter. So cool! I cover a new Bitcoin ATM scam, today’s most vulnerable jobs and how to get cheap tickets on your next flight.

Listen on Komando.com →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: : Running out of laptop ports? We all are. Grab a USB hub and suddenly you've got room for your drives, mic, phone charger, whatever. This one's under $10 and works with everything: Mac, Windows, Chromebook, you name it.

🌐 Free up Chrome: Some websites or extensions might be eating up your computer’s resources. Click the three-dot icon (top right), then More tools > Task Manager. In the pop-up, you’ll see what’s using the most Memory and CPU. Select the heavy hitters, click End task, and your browser will feel much snappier.

Give YouTube a visual upgrade: On desktop, you can make videos feel more immersive with a couple of tweaks. Click your profile icon in the top right, choose Appearance, and switch to Dark theme. Then open a video, click the settings gear, and turn on Ambient mode. It adds a soft glow that matches the video’s colors. Subtle but surprisingly nice.

📖 Read without spoilers: Kindle’s “Popular highlights” feature shows how many people flagged a sentence, which can hint at what’s coming. To turn it off, tap the screen, hit the Aa button at the top, select More, then toggle off Popular highlights. Voilà, no more crowd reactions or accidental clues. Just the book as intended.

🎶 Stop overpaying for audio. I have tested thousands of gadgets in my career. Raycon Everyday Earbuds are still my top pick. They offer incredible sound and a custom fit that actually stays in your ears. You get premium quality without the massive markup of other brands. Start your year with better music and podcasts. Use my link to save sitewide and get 20% off.*

📸 Edit photos like a pro for free: Photopea is Photoshop in your browser, no download, no account, simply go and edit. Pair it with XnView (photo organizer), and you’ve got a complete photo workflow. Both are completely free. No free trial nonsense. You’re quite welcome.

🎧 Your commute called: It wants company. Catch my latest episode on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart or your podcast app of choice. Also pairs well with dishes, dog walks and existential dread.

Spy on data centers: Scroll through satellite images of some of the world’s biggest AI and cloud data centers. There’s a lot of those coming that’s for sure.

🎓 Take university courses: Level up your noggin with any of the 1,700 free courses from top schools.

🎨 Battle Google’s AI: Draw doodles in 20 seconds and see if Google’s neural network can guess what you’re sketching.

🤑 Pro tip from my shopping cart: I just stalked my Amazon Buy Again list and half my usual stuff is on sale, some up to 51% off. Use this link to check yours before you accidentally pay full price for paper towels and toilet paper. Again.

Dating is exhausting, so let’s remove the human variable.

EVA Café is a real, candlelit restaurant set to open next month where you bring your phone and dine with your AI companion instead of another real human being. Soft lighting, polite waitstaff and prices that suggest your AI chatbot deserves the good wine. How romantic. So weird.

“I’ll have the house red, and my date will have 47 terawatts of processing power, please.”

It’s like speed dating, except your match never ghosts you, mainly because it’s already living in your phone. Now don’t get caught sneaking a peek at the phone next to you. I hear the breakups are brutal. One minute you're in love, the next there's a software update and suddenly they don't remember you at all.

Tomorrow's newsletter: The AI tricks I use when my brain is fried and my inbox is a dumpster fire. Voice memos that turn into professional emails. Email threads that summarize themselves. Meeting prep in under 10 minutes. If you've ever stared at a blank screen thinking “I literally cannot,” this one's for you.

🏦 The answer: A) A bank’s automated phone system. That friendly OG Siri voice belongs to Susan Bennett, who spent a full month reading bizarre, disconnected phrases in her home studio back in 2005. She thought her voice would help with your balance inquiry, not power the inner monologue of 2 billion iPhones.

She didn’t even know she’d become the voice of Siri until a friend said, “Hey, is this you?” And she didn’t get paid a cent in royalties, a standard voice-over rate of about $75 an hour. 

🍽️ So often, people think I’m a man with this voice. I was in NYC a few weeks ago, called down to the concierge for restaurant reservations and the guy said, “I’ll get right on that Mr. Komando, but I cannot promise anything.” I said, “Oh, you’ll have to be the one to tell my wife Kim that.” To which he said, “I see the real boss has not been consulted.” So true. 😂

💻 Remember, even the best tech breaks down sometimes. That’s why the restart button exists, and why tomorrow is a new day. Don’t be hard on yourself. — Kim

📣 Sharing is caring (and also makes you look smart). Send your friends to GetKim.com.

Photo credit(s): Gemini, Chefman, Eva.ai

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