A dozen years in the past, John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Palm Seashore County, Fla., despatched voters an e-mail posing as a county commissioner, urging them to oppose the re-election of the county’s sheriff.
He later masqueraded on-line as a Russian tech employee with a pseudonym, BadVolf, to leak confidential info in violation of state regulation, fooling officers in Florida who thought they had been coping with a foreigner.
He additionally posed as a fictional New York Metropolis heiress he referred to as Jessica, tricking an adviser to the Palm Seashore County Sheriff’s Workplace into divulging improper conduct by the division.
“And boy, did he ever spill ALL of the beans,” Mr. Dougan stated in a written response to questions for this text, through which he confirmed his function in these episodes.
These subterfuges in the US, it turned out, had been solely a prelude to a extra outstanding and probably extra ominous marketing campaign of deception he has been conducting from Russia.
Mr. Dougan, 51, who acquired political asylum in Moscow, is now a key participant in Russia’s disinformation operations towards the West. Again in 2016, when the Kremlin interfered within the American presidential election, a military of laptop trolls toiled for hours in an workplace constructing in St. Petersburg to attempt to idiot People on-line.
At present Mr. Dougan could also be conducting a lot the identical process largely by himself, in response to American and European authorities officers and researchers from corporations and organizations which have tracked his actions since August. The teams embrace NewsGuard, an organization that evaluations the reliability of reports and knowledge on-line; Recorded Future, a menace intelligence firm; and Clemson College’s Media Forensics Hub.
Working from an residence crowded with servers and different laptop tools, Mr. Dougan has constructed an ever-growing community of greater than 160 faux web sites that mimic information shops in the US, Britain and France.
With the assistance of commercially obtainable synthetic intelligence instruments, together with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has stuffed the websites with tens of 1000’s of articles, many based mostly on precise information occasions. Interspersed amongst them are additionally bespoke fabrications that officers in the US and European Union have attributed to Russian intelligence businesses or the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Between September and Might, Mr. Dougan’s shops have been cited or referred to in information articles or social media posts practically 8,000 instances, and seen by greater than 37 million folks in 16 languages, in response to a report launched Wednesday by NewsGuard.
The fakes have just lately included a baseless article on a faux San Francisco Chronicle web site that stated Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had smuggled 300 kilograms of cocaine from Argentina. One other false narrative appeared final month within the sham Chronicle and on one other website, referred to as The Boston Instances, claiming that the C.I.A. was working with Ukrainians to undermine Donald J. Trump’s presidential marketing campaign.
Mr. Dougan, in a sequence of textual content exchanges and one phone interview with The New York Instances, denied working the websites. A digital path of clues, together with net domains and web protocol addresses, suggests in any other case, the officers and researchers say.
A buddy in Florida who has recognized Mr. Dougan for 20 years, Jose Lambiet, additionally stated in a phone interview that Mr. Dougan informed him in January that he had created the websites.
Steven Brill, a founding father of NewsGuard, which has spent months monitoring Mr. Dougan’s work, stated he represented “a large incursion into the American information ecosystem.”
“It’s not just a few man sitting in his basement in New Jersey tapping out a phony web site,” he added.
Mr. Dougan’s emergence as a weapon of the Kremlin’s propaganda battle follows a troubled life in the US that included dwelling foreclosures and chapter. As a regulation enforcement officer in Florida and Maine, he confronted accusations of extreme use of power and sexual harassment that resulted in expensive lawsuits towards the departments he labored for.
He faces an arrest warrant in Florida — its information sealed by court docket order — on 21 felony prices of extortion and wiretapping that resulted from a long-running feud with the sheriff of Palm Seashore County.
Mr. Dougan’s actions from Moscow, the place he fled in 2016 one step forward of these prices, proceed to attract scrutiny from the authorities in the US. Final yr, he impersonated an F.B.I. agent in a phone name to Mr. Brill, in response to an account by Mr. Brill to be revealed subsequent week in a brand new e book, “The Loss of life of Reality.”
Mr. Dougan, who acknowledged making the decision in a textual content message this week, had been angered by a NewsGuard report in February 2023 that criticized YouTube for permitting movies parroting Russian propaganda in regards to the battle in Ukraine, together with some by Mr. Dougan.
In a rambling, profanity-laced video in response on YouTube final yr, Mr. Dougan posted excerpts from the decision with Mr. Brill and confirmed a Google Earth satellite tv for pc {photograph} of his dwelling in Westchester County, a suburb of New York Metropolis — “simply down the street from the Clinton crime household,” as Mr. Dougan put it, referring to the house of former President Invoice Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The decision prompted an F.B.I. investigation that, in response to Mr. Brill, traced the decision to Mr. Dougan’s phone in Russia. (A spokeswoman for the bureau didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the investigation or Mr. Dougan’s earlier actions.)
A Historical past in Legislation Enforcement
Mr. Dougan started to hone the talents that he’s placing to make use of immediately throughout a turbulent childhood in the US. Within the written responses to questions for this text, he stated he had struggled at dwelling and at school, bullied due to Tourette’s syndrome, however discovered a ardour in computer systems. When he was 8, he stated, the person who would develop into his stepfather started instructing him to write down laptop code.
“By the point I used to be 16,” he wrote in a single response, “I knew a dozen completely different programming languages.”
After a four-year stint within the Marine Corps, which he claims he provided to affix in lieu of a jail sentence for fleeing a police cease for rushing on a bike, he grew to become a police officer first in a small power in Mangonia Park, Fla., after which the Palm Seashore County Sheriff’s Workplace from 2005 to 2009.
Based on information reviews and his personal accounts through the years, Mr. Dougan repeatedly clashed with superiors and colleagues, going through quite a few inside investigations that he stated had been retaliatory as a result of he objected to police misconduct, together with situations of racial bias.
In 2009, he moved briefly to Windham, Maine, to work in one other small-town police division. There he confronted a criticism of sexual harassment that resulted in his dismissal earlier than he accomplished his probationary interval.
Mr. Dougan began a web site referred to as WindhamTalk to defend himself. The web site foreshadowed others he would create, together with one dedicated to the Palm Seashore County Sheriff’s Workplace, PBSOTalk.
After shifting again to Florida, he used PBSOTalk to torment specifically the division’s elected sheriff, Ric L. Bradshaw, whom he accused of corruption. He posted the illegal recordings of “Jessica” chatting with a former detective commander, Mark Lewis, who, Mr. Dougan claimed, was investigating the sheriff’s critics, together with himself. As Mr. Dougan acknowledged in a video interview final yr, it’s unlawful in Florida to file a phone dialog with out permission.
In an announcement, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Workplace, Therese C. Barbera, stated Mr. Dougan was “a needed felon for cyberstalking utilizing unsubstantiated and fabricated claims which have NO factual foundation.”
In February 2016, PBSOTalk posted confidential details about 1000’s of cops, federal brokers and judges. The subsequent month, F.B.I. brokers and native cops searched Mr. Dougan’s dwelling, seizing all of his digital tools.
Fearing arrest, he stated, he made his solution to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony prices the following yr.
Peddling Russia Propaganda
In Russia, Mr. Dougan refashioned himself as a sort of journalist, documenting his travels across the nation, together with Lake Baikal in Siberia and Crimea, the peninsula in Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014 in violation of worldwide regulation.
He posted pictures and movies from these journeys on YouTube, which suspended his channel after NewsGuard’s report final yr. He additionally appeared usually on state media, together with with two former intelligence operatives, Maria Butina, who penetrated Republican political circles, and Anna Chapman, certainly one of 10 spies who impressed the tv sequence “The People.”
In 2021, as Mr. Putin started mobilizing the army forces that may invade Ukraine, Mr. Dougan posted a video that the Kremlin would cite as one justification for its assault. In it, he claimed that the US operated organic weapons factories in Ukraine, an accusation that Russia and its allies have pushed with out ever offering proof.
As soon as the battle began, Mr. Dougan recounted in his written responses to questions, he traveled to Ukraine 14 instances to report from the Russian aspect of the entrance traces. He appeared in Russian authorities hearings purporting to show Ukraine’s transgressions, indicating some stage of cooperation with the federal government authorities.
He has confronted criticism for the reviews, together with in a profile in The Each day Beast, that he posted on YouTube and different platforms. Mr. Dougan has portrayed the battle a lot as Russia’s propaganda has: as a righteous battle towards neo-Nazis backed by a decadent West, led by the US and NATO.
“The West has constantly lied about each side of this battle,” he wrote. “Why does just one aspect get to inform their story?”
Pretend Information Websites within the U.S.
In April 2021, Mr. Dougan revived a web site referred to as DC Weekly, which had been created 4 years earlier and revealed faux articles in regards to the Palm Seashore County Sheriff’s Workplace. Based on a report final December by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, the area and web protocol handle had been shared by PBSOTalk and Mr. Dougan’s private web site, in addition to two advertising and marketing books he wrote in exile and a safety agency he operated, Falcon Eye Tech, which provided “offshore safety monitoring companies.”
After Russia’s assault on Ukraine started in 2022, the location carried articles in regards to the battle.
Then, final August, the location started to publish articles based mostly on elaborate fabrications that the Western authorities officers and disinformation researchers stated got here from Russia’s propaganda items. They usually appeared first in movies or audio recordings on obscure X accounts or YouTube channels, then unfold to websites like DC Weekly after which to Russian state media as in the event that they had been genuine accusations, a course of researchers name “narrative laundering.”
The baseless narratives included claims that relations or cronies of Ukraine’s chief secretly purchased luxurious properties, yachts or jewellery, and that Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III of Britain, had kidnapped and abused kids throughout a secret go to to Ukraine.
Dozens of latest websites have appeared in current months. They included ones made to seem like native information shops: The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Instances, The Flagstaff Publish and The Houston Publish. Some hijacked names of precise information organizations, like The San Francisco Chronicle, or approximated them, within the case of 1 referred to as The New York Information Each day.
When The New York Instances reported on the brand new websites in March, DC Weekly revealed a prolonged response in a stilted type that indicated the usage of synthetic intelligence. It was written below the title Jessica Devlin, one of many fictitious journalists on the location. “I’m not a shadowy overseas actor,” the article stated.
On the finish, the article invited media inquiries at an e-mail handle with the area Falcon Eye Tech.
Two days later, Mr. Dougan answered.
103 New Websites in Two Days
Mr. Dougan, who grew to become a Russian citizen final yr and voted within the nation’s presidential election in March, stated in his messages to The Instances that he made a dwelling by promoting safety units he designed for a producer in China. He denied being paid by any Russian authorities, claiming he funds his actions himself.
His buddy Mr. Lambiet, a personal investigator and former journalist, stated he thought of Mr. Dougan a superb man however cautioned that Mr. Dougan had a propensity to make issues up. “He’s like a Russian disinformation marketing campaign: It’s onerous to know what’s true and what’s not,” he stated.
As proof of Mr. Dougan’s function within the information websites has emerged, he has shifted techniques. Recorded Future, the menace intelligence firm, launched a report this month that detailed his ties to businesses linked to the Russian disinformation. The report documented the in depth use of A.I., which one of many firm’s researchers, Clément Briens, estimated made Mr. Dougan’s work far cheaper than hiring a troll military.
On the time, Recorded Future recognized 57 domains that Mr. Dougan had created. In a two-day span after the report was revealed, 103 new websites appeared, all on a server in California.
“He’s attempting to obfuscate the Russian hyperlinks,” Mr. Briens stated.
Mr. Dougan at instances treats his actions as a sport of cat and mouse. He spent months partaking with a researcher at NewsGuard, McKenzie Sadeghi, revealing particulars of his life in Moscow whereas mocking her boss, Mr. Brill.
“He gave the impression to be toying with me, each to elicit my responses and, it appeared, to indicate off his expertise for world on-line mischief, with out really admitting something,” she wrote within the report revealed on Wednesday.
Whereas Mr. Dougan’s websites have centered on Russian narratives in regards to the battle in Ukraine, the researchers and authorities officers say he has laid the inspiration for interference within the unusually giant confluence of elections going down around the globe this yr.
This implies a “threat of an expanded operation scope within the close to future, probably concentrating on various audiences and democratic methods in Europe and different Western nations for varied strategic targets,” the diplomatic service of the European Union wrote in a report final month when the community included solely 23 web sites.
In current weeks, the websites have included themes that appear meant to stoke the partisan fires in the US earlier than November’s presidential election.
Final month, articles appeared on two of Mr. Dougan’s newer faux websites, The Houston Publish and The Flagstaff Publish, detailing a baseless declare that the F.B.I. had planted an eavesdropping machine in Mr. Trump’s workplace at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Among the new websites have names, like Proper Assessment and Pink State Report, that recommend a conservative political bent. In April, a website that researchers additionally linked to Mr. Dougan provided “main cryptocurrency rewards” for leaks of details about American officers, singling out two prosecutors and a choose concerned within the felony circumstances towards Mr. Trump.
“If the location was mine,” he wrote in response to a query about it, “I might need folks to offer paperwork on any soiled politician, Republican, Democrat or different.”
