A dozen years in the past, John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Palm Seaside County, Fla., despatched voters an electronic 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 known as Jessica, tricking an adviser to the Palm Seaside 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, 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 in opposition to 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.
Immediately Mr. Dougan could also be conducting a lot the identical activity largely by himself, in keeping with 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 opinions the reliability of stories and knowledge on-line; Recorded Future, a risk 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 pretend web sites that mimic information shops in the US, Britain and France.
With the assistance of commercially accessible synthetic intelligence instruments, together with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E 3, he has crammed the websites with tens of 1000’s 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 shops have been cited or referred to in information articles or social media posts practically 8,000 occasions, and seen by greater than 37 million folks in 16 languages, in keeping with a report back to be launched Wednesday by NewsGuard.
The fakes have not too long ago included a baseless article on a pretend 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 website, known as The Boston Occasions, 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 Occasions, 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 recognized 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 “an enormous 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 pressure and sexual harassment that resulted in expensive 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 prices of extortion and wiretapping that resulted from a long-running feud with the sheriff of Palm Seaside 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 12 months, he impersonated an F.B.I. agent in a phone name to Mr. Brill, in keeping with an account by Mr. Brill to be printed subsequent week in a brand new ebook, “The Demise 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 12 months, 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 keeping with 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 Regulation 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 mentioned he had struggled at residence and at school, bullied due to Tourette’s syndrome, however discovered a ardour in computer systems. When he was 8, he mentioned, the person who would develop into his stepfather started educating him to jot down laptop 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 hitch in lieu of a jail sentence for fleeing a police cease for dashing on a motorbike, he turned a police officer first in a small pressure in Mangonia Park, Fla., after which the Palm Seaside County Sheriff’s Workplace from 2005 to 2009.
In keeping with information stories and his personal accounts through the years, Mr. Dougan repeatedly clashed with superiors and colleagues, going through 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 known as WindhamTalk to defend himself. The web site foreshadowed others he would create, together with one dedicated to the Palm Seaside County Sheriff’s Workplace, PBSOTalk.
After shifting again to Florida, he used PBSOTalk to torment particularly 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 12 months, it’s unlawful in Florida to report 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 1000’s of law enforcement officials, federal brokers and judges. The subsequent month. F.B.I. brokers and native law enforcement officials searched Mr. Dougan’s residence, seizing all of his digital tools.
Fearing arrest, he mentioned, he made his approach to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony prices the following 12 months.
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 Russian annexed in 2014 in violation of worldwide legislation.
He posted images and movies from these journeys on YouTube, which suspended his channel after NewsGuard’s report final 12 months. He additionally appeared usually on state media, together with with two former intelligence operatives, Maria Butina, who penetrated Republican political circles, and Anna Chapman, one in all 10 spies who impressed the tv collection “The People.”
In 2021, as Mr. Putin started mobilizing the army forces that will 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 occasions to report from the Russian facet of the entrance strains. 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 stories, together with in a profile in The Every 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 facet 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 known as DC Weekly, which had been created 4 years earlier and printed pretend articles in regards to the Palm Seaside County Sheriff’s Workplace. In keeping with 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 supplied “offshore safety monitoring companies.”
After Russia’s assault on Ukraine started in 2022, the positioning carried articles in regards to the battle.
Then, final August, the positioning started to publish articles primarily based on elaborate fabrications that the Western authorities officers and disinformation researchers mentioned got here from Russia’s propaganda models. They typically 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 kinfolk 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 recent websites have appeared in current months. They included ones made to appear to be native information shops: The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Occasions, 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 known as The New York Information Every day.
When The New York Occasions reported on the brand new websites in March, DC Weekly printed a prolonged response in a stilted type that indicated using synthetic intelligence. It was written below the identify Jessica Devlin, one of many fictitious journalists on the positioning. “I’m not a shadowy overseas actor,” the article mentioned.
On the finish, the article invited media inquiries at an electronic mail handle 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 12 months and voted within the nation’s presidential election in March, mentioned in his messages to The Occasions 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, mentioned he thought-about Mr. Dougan 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 risk intelligence firm, launched a report this month that detailed his ties to businesses linked to the Russian disinformation. The report documented the intensive 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 printed, 103 new websites appeared, all on a server in California.
“He’s attempting to obfuscate the Russian hyperlinks,” Mr. Briens mentioned.
Mr. Dougan at occasions treats his actions as a recreation of cat and mouse. He spent months participating 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 international on-line mischief, with out really admitting something,” she wrote within the report back to be printed 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 muse for interference within the unusually giant confluence of elections going down world wide this 12 months.
This means a “danger of an expanded operation scope within the close to future, probably concentrating on numerous audiences and democratic methods in Europe and different Western nations for numerous strategic aims.” 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 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 pretend websites, The Houston Publish and The Flagstaff Publish, detailing a baseless declare that the F.B.I. had planted an eavesdropping system in Mr. Trump’s workplace at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
A few of the new websites have names, like Proper Overview and Crimson State Report, that counsel a conservative political bent. In April, a website that researchers additionally linked to Mr. Dougan supplied “main cryptocurrency rewards” for leaks of details about American officers, singling out two prosecutors and a choose concerned within the legal circumstances in opposition to Mr. Trump.
“If the positioning 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.”