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 legislation, 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 mentioned in a written response to questions for this text, by 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 doubtlessly 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 in opposition to the West. Again in 2016, when the Kremlin interfered within the American presidential election, a military of pc trolls toiled for hours in an workplace constructing in St. Petersburg to attempt to idiot Individuals on-line.
At this time Mr. Dougan could also be conducting a lot the identical activity largely by himself, in response to American and European authorities officers and researchers from firms and organizations which have tracked his actions since August. The teams embrace NewsGuard, an organization that opinions 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 pc gear, Mr. Dougan has constructed an ever-growing network of more than 160 fake websites that mimic information retailers in the US, Britain and France.
With the assistance of commercially out there synthetic intelligence instruments, together with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has stuffed the websites with tens of hundreds of articles, many primarily based 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 retailers have been cited or referred to in information articles or social media posts practically 8,000 instances, and seen by greater than 37 million individuals in 16 languages, in response to a report back to be launched Wednesday by NewsGuard.
The fakes have not too long ago included a baseless article on a faux San Francisco Chronicle web site that mentioned 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 web site, 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 collection of textual content exchanges and one phone interview with The New York Instances, denied working the websites. A digital path of clues, together with internet domains and web protocol addresses, suggests in any other case, the officers and researchers say.
A buddy in Florida who has identified Mr. Dougan for 20 years, Jose Lambiet, additionally mentioned in a phone interview that Mr. Dougan advised 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, mentioned 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 residence foreclosures and chapter. As a legislation enforcement officer in Florida and Maine, he confronted accusations of extreme use of drive and sexual harassment that resulted in pricey lawsuits in opposition to the departments he labored for.
He faces an arrest warrant in Florida — its information sealed by court docket order — on 21 felony expenses 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 expenses, 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 guide, “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 concerning 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 excepts of the decision with Mr. Brill and confirmed a Google Earth satellite tv for pc {photograph} of his residence 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 at the moment throughout a turbulent childhood in the US. Within the written responses to questions for this text, he mentioned he had struggled at residence and in class, bullied due to Tourette’s syndrome, however discovered a ardour in computer systems. When he was 8, he mentioned, the person who would turn into his stepfather started educating him to jot down pc code.
“By the point I used to be 16,” he wrote in a single response, “I knew a dozen totally different programming languages.”
After a four-year stint within the Marine Corps, which he claims he supplied to affix in lieu of a jail sentence for fleeing a police cease for rushing on a bike, he turned a police officer first in a small drive in Mangonia Park, Fla., after which the Palm Seashore County Sheriff’s Workplace from 2005 to 2009.
In response to news reports and his personal accounts over time, Mr. Dougan repeatedly clashed with superiors and colleagues, dealing with quite a few inner investigations that he mentioned 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 grievance 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 transferring 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 document a phone dialog with out permission.
In an announcement, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Workplace, Therese C. Barbera, mentioned Mr. Dougan was “a wished felon for cyberstalking utilizing unsubstantiated and fabricated claims which have NO factual foundation.”
In February 2016, PBSOTalk posted confidential details about hundreds of law enforcement officials, federal brokers and judges. The following month. F.B.I. brokers and native law enforcement officials searched Mr. Dougan’s residence, seizing all of his digital gear.
Fearing arrest, he mentioned, he made his option to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony expenses the following yr.
Peddling Russia Propaganda
In Russia, Mr. Dougan refashioned himself as a form of journalist, documenting his travels across the nation, together with Lake Baikal in Siberia and Crimea, the peninsula in Ukraine that Russian annexed in 2014 in violation of worldwide legislation.
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 collection “The Individuals.”
In 2021, as Mr. Putin started mobilizing the navy 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 without ever providing evidence.
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 facet of the entrance strains. He appeared in Russian authorities hearings purporting to reveal Ukraine’s transgressions, indicating some degree of cooperation with the federal government authorities.
He has confronted criticism for the stories, 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 in opposition to 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 facet 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 concerning the Palm Seashore County Sheriff’s Workplace. In response to a report final December by Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, the area and web protocol tackle 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 supplied “offshore safety monitoring providers.”
After Russia’s assault on Ukraine started in 2022, the location carried articles concerning the battle.
Then, final August, the location started to publish articles primarily based on elaborate fabrications that the Western authorities officers and disinformation researchers mentioned 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 latest months. They included ones made to appear to be native information retailers: 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 fashion that indicated the usage of synthetic intelligence. It was written underneath the identify Jessica Devlin, one of many fictitious journalists on the location. “I’m not a shadowy international actor,” the article mentioned.
On the finish, the article invited media inquiries at an e mail tackle with the area Falcon Eye Tech.
Two days later, Mr. Dougan answered.
103 New Websites in Two Days
Mr. Dougan, who turned a Russian citizen final yr and voted within the nation’s presidential election in March, mentioned in his messages to The Instances that he made a residing by promoting safety gadgets 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 non-public investigator and former journalist, mentioned he thought-about Mr. Dougan a great 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 mentioned.
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 mentioned.
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 appeared to be toying with me, each to elicit my responses and, it appeared, to point out off his expertise for world on-line mischief, with out truly admitting something,” she wrote within the report back to be revealed on Wednesday.
Whereas Mr. Dougan’s websites have centered on Russian narratives concerning the battle in Ukraine, the researchers and authorities officers say he has laid the muse for interference within the unusually giant confluence of elections happening around the globe this yr.
This implies a “danger of an expanded operation scope within the close to future, doubtlessly focusing on various audiences and democratic programs in Europe and different Western nations for varied strategic goals.” the diplomatic service of the European Union wrote in a report final month when the community included solely 23 web sites.
In latest weeks, the websites have included themes that appear supposed 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 gadget in Mr. Trump’s workplace at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
A number of the new websites have names, like Proper Evaluation and Crimson State Report, that counsel a conservative political bent. In April, a web site that researchers additionally linked to Mr. Dougan supplied “main cryptocurrency rewards” for leaks of details about American officers, singling out two prosecutors and a decide concerned within the legal instances in opposition to Mr. Trump.
“If the location was mine,” he wrote in response to a query about it, “I might need individuals to provide paperwork on any soiled politician, Republican, Democrat or different.”
