Last month, ProPublica reported an investigation into Texas oil refinery startup America First Refining, including secret investment from Donald Trump Jr., and the central figure, CEO John Calce. In the middle of that work, the team did a “scrub” on another company Calce had incorporated: Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals. What they found was not just confusing. It looked like an entire corporate universe built to be seen, then hard to verify.

The Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals website claimed scale that did not match what ProPublica’s earlier reporting suggested about Calce’s funding struggle. The front page said the firm “connects the world’s most vital energy markets with speed, safety, and precision bulk oil storage.” It also claimed more than 850 employees and 28 million barrels of oil storage capacity across six global hubs. When ProPublica pivoted to confirm the corporate leadership through Google, it found an unexpected problem: the named executives appeared to have no trace on the internet.

The company’s CEO was Sarah Jenkins, described as having more than 20 years of experience at major energy firms. Its chief technology officer was David Chen, with a bio stating he “built the company’s proprietary inventory management portal and integrated AI-driven predictive maintenance systems.” Neither could be found online, and even the links to LinkedIn profiles were dead. ProPublica then tried a more distinct name, Vice President for Sustainability Dr. Sofia Rossi, who the website claimed had “spearheaded the ‘Future Fuels’ program, preparing assets for biofuels and hydrogen.” Those, too, were dead ends, including broken or missing LinkedIn profile links.

Next came phone numbers. When ProPublica searched for the company’s Texas phone numbers, it found the same numbers listed for unrelated local businesses: a Houston baklava caterer, a Dallas-area taxi service, and an OB-GYN office. Calling those Texas numbers did not reach the supposed oil terminal operator. ProPublica also tried numbers supposedly tied to the firm’s Netherlands, Singapore, and China facilities. Those calls were dead as well. The emerging hypothesis was blunt: maybe the company didn’t exist as described, at least not as a real operating business with real people and real operations.

Then ProPublica looked at the website’s source code and found a telltale note: “This feature isn’t implemented yet, but don’t worry! You can request it in your next prompt!” That kind of placeholder is the opposite of what you’d expect from a serious operator with global tanks, real inventories, and 28 million barrels of storage capacity. ProPublica traced the domain registration to a company called Hostinger, which offers an AI website builder for $2.99 per month. The homepage for the tool marketed the process in plain language: “Describe it, and AI builds it.”

The most consequential part of the story is how Google’s AI summarization behaved. ProPublica reports that Google’s AI “AI Overview” responses seemed to ratify Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals’ “bona fides.” When a query matched an award the company claimed to have won, the Google AI Overview said recent notable recipients included Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals, “recognized for their rapid expansion in the independent oil and terminal operations sector.” ProPublica then examined a key warning label of its own: Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals is a real LLC, but the website content appears fictional, including its history, job postings, and a diversity and inclusion policy.

After ProPublica reached out to Hostinger, the site was pulled down. Hostinger’s spokesperson said, “After receiving your inquiry, we carried out an internal review. Based on the violations identified, we suspended the website and the account behind it in line with our Terms of Service.” ProPublica also reports that the question is not just whether fake websites can be created, but whether AI Overviews can “indiscriminately take in fake material and authoritatively spit it back out as real.”

In response to ProPublica’s questions, a Google spokesperson said: “AI Overviews are rooted in our core Search ranking systems, surfacing reliable and high-quality information for the vast majority of queries. For uncommon search terms like these, there might not be high quality information published that matches the query - and we use these examples to improve our search systems.” ProPublica points to a parallel, broader risk reported by The New York Times in April: an analysis found AI Overviews were accurate approximately 9 out of 10 times. The Times report also noted that “tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour” could follow from that kind of error rate given vast search volumes. Google told The Times that the study has “serious holes” and acknowledged AI Overviews “can make mistakes.”

Zoom out, and the second-order implication is uncomfortable for every executive who relies on “information at scale.” ProPublica notes additional examples, including a BBC reporter who wrote a fictional article and saw Google’s AI and ChatGPT pick it up and repeat it, and a 404 Media report that suggested it is “trivially easy” to use Reddit to manipulate AI search. In other words, even when a fake is obvious to a human investigator, the system’s incentives can still reward it: quick answers, confident tone, and downstream automation.

Finally, ProPublica brought the story back to the real-world corporate pressure point. While preparing the piece, it reached out to John Calce asking about the site. An attorney for America First Refining replied with a letter dated June 24 sent to Hostinger, also addressed to email addresses listed on the Brownsville Energy Storage Terminals website. The letter demanded “immediate removal from the brownsvilleenergyterminals.com website of all unauthorized references to America First’s office address.” It added that America First “has no connection or affiliation with the brownsvilleenergyterminals.com website and has not authorized the use of its corporate address there.” Emails to the listed press contact bounced.

So what was the website for? ProPublica lays out open questions: Was it malicious? A mistaken test site? Designed for consumption by someone meant to think it was real? ProPublica does not claim to know. But the operational lesson is clear. If an AI website builder can generate a plausible corporate narrative for $2.99 per month, and AI search can amplify it into authoritative-sounding summaries, then due diligence becomes harder, faster, and more expensive at the same time. For boards, investors, and executives in regulated, asset-heavy industries like energy, this is not a “media literacy” issue. It is a risk to identity, counterpart verification, and the integrity of information used in decisions.