A dozen years in the past, John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff in Palm Beach 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 data 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 City heiress he known as Jessica, tricking an adviser to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office 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, in which he confirmed his function in these episodes.
Those subterfuges in the United States, 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. Back in 2016, when the Kremlin interfered in the American presidential election, a military of pc trolls toiled for hours in an workplace constructing in St. Petersburg to attempt to idiot Americans on-line.
Today 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 firms and organizations which have tracked his actions since August. The teams embody NewsGuard, a firm that opinions the reliability of information and data on-line; Recorded Future, a menace intelligence firm; and Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.
Working from an condo crowded with servers and different pc gear, Mr. Dougan has constructed an ever-growing community of greater than 160 pretend web sites that mimic information retailers in the United States, Britain and France.
With the assistance of commercially out there 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 based mostly on precise information occasions. Interspersed amongst them are additionally bespoke fabrications that officers in the United States and European Union have attributed to Russian intelligence companies or the administration of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Between September and May, Mr. Dougan’s retailers have been cited or referred to in information articles or social media posts practically 8,000 occasions, 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 lately 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. Another false narrative appeared final month in the sham Chronicle and on one other web site, known as The Boston Times, 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 Times, 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 good friend in Florida who has recognized Mr. Dougan for 20 years, Jose Lambiet, additionally mentioned in a phone interview that Mr. Dougan informed him in January that he had created the websites.
Steven Brill, a founder of NewsGuard, which has spent months monitoring Mr. Dougan’s work, mentioned he represented “a massive incursion into the American news ecosystem.”
“It’s not just some guy sitting in his basement in New Jersey tapping out a phony website,” he added.
Mr. Dougan’s emergence as a weapon of the Kremlin’s propaganda warfare follows a troubled life in the United States that included dwelling foreclosures and chapter. As a legislation enforcement officer in Florida and Maine, he confronted accusations of extreme use of power and sexual harassment that resulted in pricey lawsuits in opposition to the departments he labored for.
He faces an arrest warrant in Florida — its data 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 Beach 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 United States. Last 12 months, 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 new e-book, “The Death of Truth.”
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 warfare 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 dwelling in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City — “just down the road from the Clinton crime family,” as Mr. Dougan put it, referring to the house of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The name 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 History in Law Enforcement
Mr. Dougan started to hone the talents that he’s placing to make use of right now throughout a turbulent childhood in the United States. In the written responses to questions for this text, he mentioned he had struggled at dwelling and in faculty, bullied as a result of of Tourette’s syndrome, however discovered a ardour in computer systems. When he was 8, he mentioned, the person who would grow to be his stepfather started educating him to jot down pc code.
“By the time I was 16,” he wrote in one response, “I knew a dozen different programming languages.”
After a four-year stint in 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 turned a police officer first in a small power in Mangonia Park, Fla., after which the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office from 2005 to 2009.
According to information experiences 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 known as WindhamSpeak to defend himself. The web site foreshadowed others he would create, together with one dedicated to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, PBSOTalk.
After transferring again to Florida, he used PBSOTalk to torment in specific 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 file a phone dialog with out permission.
In a assertion, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, Therese C. Barbera, mentioned Mr. Dougan was “a wanted felon for cyberstalking using unsubstantiated and fabricated claims that have NO factual basis.”
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 gear.
Fearing arrest, he mentioned, he made his method to Canada and caught a flight to Moscow. He was indicted on the 21 Florida felony expenses the subsequent 12 months.
Peddling Russia Propaganda
In Russia, Mr. Dougan refashioned himself as a type 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 12 months. He additionally appeared commonly on state media, together with with two former intelligence operatives, Maria Butina, who penetrated Republican political circles, and Anna Chapman, one of 10 spies who impressed the tv collection “The Americans.”
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 United States operated organic weapons factories in Ukraine, an accusation that Russia and its allies have pushed with out ever offering proof.
Once the warfare began, Mr. Dougan recounted in his written responses to questions, he traveled to Ukraine 14 occasions to report from the Russian aspect of the entrance traces. He appeared in Russian authorities hearings purporting to reveal Ukraine’s transgressions, indicating some stage of cooperation with the federal government authorities.
He has confronted criticism for the experiences, together with in a profile in The Daily Beast, that he posted on YouTube and different platforms. Mr. Dougan has portrayed the warfare a lot as Russia’s propaganda has: as a righteous battle in opposition to neo-Nazis backed by a decadent West, led by the United States and NATO.
“The West has consistently lied about every aspect of this conflict,” he wrote. “Why does only one side get to tell their story?”
Fake News Sites in the U.S.
In April 2021, Mr. Dougan revived a web site known as DC Weekly, which had been created 4 years earlier and revealed pretend articles concerning the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. According 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 provided “offshore security monitoring services.”
After Russia’s assault on Ukraine started in 2022, the location carried articles concerning the warfare.
Then, final August, the location started to publish articles based mostly 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 youngsters throughout a secret go to to Ukraine.
Dozens of new websites have appeared in current months. They included ones made to appear to be native information retailers: The Chicago Chronicle, The Miami Chronicle, The Boston Times, The Flagstaff Post and The Houston Post. Some hijacked names of precise information organizations, like The San Francisco Chronicle, or approximated them, in the case of one known as The New York News Daily.
When The New York Times reported on the brand new websites in March, DC Weekly revealed a prolonged response in a stilted type that indicated the use of synthetic intelligence. It was written below the title Jessica Devlin, one of the fictional journalists on the location. “I’m not a shadowy foreign actor,” the article mentioned.
At the top, the article invited media inquiries at an e-mail tackle with the area Falcon Eye Tech.
Two days later, Mr. Dougan answered.
103 New Sites in Two Days
Mr. Dougan, who turned a Russian citizen final 12 months and voted in the nation’s presidential election in March, mentioned in his messages to The Times 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 good friend Mr. Lambiet, a non-public investigator and former journalist, mentioned he thought of Mr. Dougan a good man however cautioned that Mr. Dougan had a propensity to make issues up. “He’s like a Russian disinformation campaign: It’s hard to know what’s true and what’s not,” he mentioned.
As proof of Mr. Dougan’s function in 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 companies linked to the Russian disinformation. The report documented the in depth use of A.I., which one of the corporate’s researchers, Clément Briens, estimated made Mr. Dougan’s work far cheaper than hiring a troll military.
At 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 trying to obfuscate the Russian links,” Mr. Briens mentioned.
Mr. Dougan at occasions treats his actions as a sport 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 seemed to be toying with me, both to elicit my responses and, it seemed, to show off his talent for global online mischief, without actually admitting anything,” she wrote in the report back to be revealed on Wednesday.
While Mr. Dougan’s websites have centered on Russian narratives concerning the warfare in Ukraine, the researchers and authorities officers say he has laid the muse for interference in the unusually massive confluence of elections happening around the globe this 12 months.
This suggests a “risk of an expanded operation scope in the near future, potentially targeting diverse audiences and democratic systems in Europe and other Western nations for various strategic objectives.” 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 United States earlier than November’s presidential election.
Last month, articles appeared on two of Mr. Dougan’s newer pretend websites, The Houston Post and The Flagstaff Post, 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.
Some of the brand new websites have names, like Right Review and Red State Report, that counsel a conservative political bent. In April, a web site that researchers additionally linked to Mr. Dougan provided “major cryptocurrency rewards” for leaks of details about American officers, singling out two prosecutors and a choose concerned in the legal circumstances in opposition to Mr. Trump.
“If the site was mine,” he wrote in response to a query about it, “I would want people to give documents on any dirty politician, Republican, Democrat or other.”