Status check

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) undercover investigator Ronnie Walker was once part of the agency’s Art Crime Team. Walker co-founded the team in 2004 to go after art thieves and return the stolen artworks to their owners. the team in 2004 to go after art thieves and return the stolen artworks to their owners.

In his 29-year stint with the FBI, Walker helped recover a stolen 17th-century etching by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn and the famous pair of ruby slippers featured in the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” that was stolen from a Minnesota museum in 2005, CNN reports.

After retiring from the FBI in December, Walker founded the Art Legacy Institute (ALI), a non-profit helping living contemporary artists protect their work and livelihood from fraudsters. Aside from thieves, ALI goes after art forgers.

“There are printing technologies that can mimic brushstrokes. So, with a small investment and a really good high-resolution camera, you can create fakes today that rival the quality of a (master forger),” Walker told CNN.

ALI’s simple way of detecting art being sold as an undocumented work of an artist is by cataloging originals. The record or digital archive is stored on ALI’s server.

ALI also identifies replicas by putting a unique “digital fingerprint” on any artwork through its partner, optical AI firm Alitheon.

Meanwhile, Japanese singles looking for other singles on the popular dating app Tapple worry about being matched with fake singles, based on a survey.

The survey indicated that Tapple users want proof that the persons they are matched with are really single and that they in turn are able to verify the seekers’ own single status to erase any doubts about their availability, The Japan Times (TJT) reports.

Tapple addressed the issue by putting a new feature on the app offering users the option of displaying a certification on their profile that confirms their single status to others, according to TJT.

To obtain the certification, a user submits a scanned copy of their My Number card or government-issued ID that indicates their marital status, TJT reports.