Fake news about Ukraine and the USA: how a former cop from Florida headed a disinformation network in Moscow
A network of Russian websites posing as American local newspapers is spreading fake news in an artificial intelligence (AI) operation. The purpose of the operation is to influence the US elections. One of the key people behind this operation was a former police officer from Florida who moved to Moscow, reports with the BBC.
Фото: Depositphotos
A sports car for the wife of the Ukrainian president at the expense of American taxpayers
This story recently surfaced on a little-known French website. It said that the first lady of Ukraine Elena Zelenskaya allegedly purchased a rare Bugatti Tourbillon sports car for 4,5 million euros ($4,8 million). And that the car was purchased in June in Paris during a visit to mark the anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy, and the money for the purchase was taken from American military aid to Ukraine.
The lie was quickly exposed. Experts pointed out strange anomalies in the published online account. The revealing video was also questionable, with its quality indicating it was likely created by AI. Finally, Bugatti categorically denied the information, calling it fake, and the company's Parisian dealer even threatened legal action against those behind this story.
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But before the truth could come out, the lie had already spread throughout the world. Influencers picked up the fake news and spread it.
For example, a certain Jackson Hinkle, a pro-Russian and pro-Trump blogger on the social network X, posted a link that was seen by more than 6,5 million people. Several other accounts spread the story even wider, reaching at least 12 million X users, according to the social network.
What do we see? A fake story appears on a fake news site for one purpose: to be shared online. In fact, this is a Russian information operation whose task is to undermine the authority of the Ukrainian government.
BBC journalists spent more than six months studying hundreds of similar articles on dozens of websites and became convinced that such information operations are aimed mainly at American voters. Some of the fakes were completely ignored by society, but some stories were picked up by influencers and even members of the US Congress.
The Bugatti story touched on important topics, such as corruption in Ukraine and the misuse of American aid.
The story of Trump's fake wiretap
Another hoax that went viral this year was targeted at domestic American politics. The fake news was published on The Houston Post, one of dozens of pseudo-American sites that are actually managed from Moscow. This fabricated news story alleged that the FBI was illegally wiretapping Donald Trump's Florida resort.
This fit perfectly with Trump's indictment of the legal system being unfair, the conspiracy against him, and his opponents using dirty tricks to discredit him. Trump himself accused the FBI of spying on him.
Experts say the hoaxes are part of a larger operation to spread disinformation during the US election campaign. Its legs almost certainly grow out of Moscow: researchers note that the scale and complexity of the operation are similar to previous Kremlin efforts to spread disinformation in the West.
“Russia will participate in the US elections in 2024,” said Chris Krebs, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs was responsible for information security for the 2020 presidential election. In his opinion, Russian information and psychological operations (IPSO) aimed at American voters are already in full swing.
The BBC contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian embassies in the US and UK for comment, but received no response. Blogger Jackson Hinkle, who spread a fake about the purchase of a Bugatti by the wife of the President of Ukraine, is also silent on this matter.
How fakes spread
Since large-scale disinformation operations gained attention during the 2016 US election campaign, disinformation peddlers have had to become more creative in both the ways they disseminate their content and give it credibility.
Today, they use artificial intelligence to create thousands of news articles posted on dozens of websites. The names of these sites sound very American - Houston Post, Chicago Crier, Boston Times, DC Weekly. Some sites use the names of real newspapers that closed years or even decades ago.
Most of the stories on these resources are not outright fakes. They are based on real news from other sites and appear to have been rewritten by AI. Some articles even provide instructions to the AI engines, such as: “Please rewrite this article with a conservative stance.”
Photo: IStock
The stories are attributed to hundreds of fake journalists with fictitious names, and in some cases use photographs taken from other sources on the Internet. For example, a photo of best-selling author Judy Batalion was used in several stories on the DC Weekly website, “written” by an online persona under the name Jessica Devlin.
“I was completely confused,” Batalion said. “I still don’t understand what my photo was doing on this site.”
Judy Batalion suggested that the photo was copied from her LinkedIn profile.
“I had no contact with this site,” she assured. “It made me think that any photo of you on the Internet could be used by someone else.”
The sheer number of stories (thousands every week), coupled with their repetition on different sites, indicates that the process of posting AI-generated content is automated. Casual readers may easily assume that the sites are normal sources of legitimate news about politics and pressing social issues.
However, hidden amid the tsunami of this content is the real purpose of the operation: fake stories aimed at American audiences. These stories often mix American and Ukrainian political issues.
For example, one such story alleged that an employee of a Ukrainian propaganda agency was unhappy when she was allegedly given a task to discredit Donald Trump and support President Biden.
Another story was about a fictitious shopping trip in New York by the first lady of Ukraine. It said that Elena Zelenskaya showed racism towards employees of the jewelry store. The BBC found that fake documents and fake YouTube videos were used to support these hoaxes.
Some of the fakes receive high levels of engagement on social media, says Clement Briens, senior threat analyst at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. His company claims that in just three days in May, 120 sites were involved in an operation they called CopyCop. And this network of sites is just one of several disinformation networks based in Russia.
Other experts at Microsoft, Clemson University and Newsguard, a company that monitors disinformation sites, are also monitoring the network. Newsguard says it has counted at least 170 sites linked to the disinformation operation.
Mackenzie Sadeghi, AI and external influence editor at Newsguard, said: “People in Russia were simultaneously citing and promoting these narratives through Russian state television, Kremlin officials and Kremlin influencers. Approximately every one or two weeks, a new narrative appears on this network, which is picked up by Russian propagandists.”
How to make a fake real
To increase the credibility of fake news, organizers create YouTube videos, often featuring people posing as “whistleblowers” or “independent journalists.” In some cases, the videos are voiced by actors, and sometimes AI-synthesized voices are used. Several videos were filmed against similar backdrops, further indicating a coordinated effort to spread fake news. The videos themselves are not intended to go viral and have very few views on YouTube. Their task is to become “sources” who will then be quoted in fake news, and from there the misinformation ends up on social networks.
For example, a story about a Ukrainian information operation allegedly targeting the Trump campaign referenced a YouTube video that used footage purportedly from an office in Kyiv, where fake campaign posters were visible on the walls.
Ultimately, sensational “revelations” such as the Trump wiretapping story and a number of earlier stories about corruption in Ukraine often repeat themes already popular among Russians and some Donald Trump supporters.
Although only a few stories reach the peak of fame, some still manage to reach an audience of millions. They even reach influential people. For example, a story that appeared on the DC Weekly website that Ukrainian officials allegedly bought yachts with American military aid money was repeated by several members of Congress, including Senator J.D. Vance and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Vance is one of several politicians mentioned as a possible running mate for Donald Trump.
Ex-Cop's Revenge
One of the key people involved in this fake news operation is John Mark Dugan, a former US Marine who worked as a police officer in Florida and Maine in the 2000s. Dugan later created a website to gather information about the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department, where he previously worked.
The site posted home addresses and police contacts along with fake stories and rumors. The FBI raided Dugan's apartment in 2016, after which he fled to Moscow. Since then, the former policeman has written books, reported from the occupied territories of Ukraine and spoken on panels at Russian think tanks, at military events, and on a TV channel owned by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
In correspondence with the BBC, Dugan categorically denied his involvement in pseudo-American sites disseminating fake news. He also denied that he knew about the fake Bugatti sports car. But on other occasions, the ex-cop boasted about his success in spreading fake news. At some point, he even hinted that his activities were a kind of revenge on the American authorities: “For me, this is a game, let them pay.”
The BBC consulted experts who helped trace IP addresses and other digital information associated with websites run by Dougan. One of them, DC Weekly, posted a manifesto of a certain “American citizen”: “I am the owner of the site, an American citizen, a US Army veteran, born and raised in the United States.” Dugan's email address was provided at the end of the article. By the way, after the BBC talked about a former cop who produced fake news, a fake version of the BBC website appeared on the Internet.
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Dugan is likely not the only person working on an influence operation.
"I think it's important not to exaggerate his role in this campaign," said Darren Linville, co-chair of the Media Forensics Center at Clemson University. “He may just be a minor player and a useful figurehead because he is an American.”
Although Dugan regularly appears in Russian state media and Russian think tanks, the former cop himself denies receiving money from the Kremlin.
“I have never received a penny from the Russian government,” he said in a text message.
The goal is the US elections
The operation in which Dugan is involved is increasingly shifting its focus from stories about the war in Ukraine to stories about the politics of the United States and Great Britain. The false story about the FBI and the alleged wiretapping at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort was one of the first stories to focus entirely on US politics, without mentioning Ukraine or Russia.
Clint Watts, head of Microsoft's Digital Threat Analysis Center, noted that the operation often combines topics relevant to both Ukraine and the West. The volume of content being released and the growing sophistication of efforts emanating from Russia could pose a significant challenge ahead of the November election, Watts said.
“Fakes don’t always get widespread distribution,” he noted, but clarified that several attempts every week can lead to false narratives becoming entrenched in the “information ocean” of the election campaign.
“The days when Russia bought advertising for rubles or had obvious trolls sitting in a factory in St. Petersburg are gone,” explained Nina Yankovic, head of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit trying to combat the spread of disinformation.
Yankovic was director of the short-lived Countering Disinformation Council, a division of the US Department of Homeland Security.
“We are now seeing a lot more cases of information laundering,” she said, using a term that refers to the laundering of dirty money to hide its true source.
Microsoft researchers say that “fake sites” are spreading fake stories about UK politics (especially given the early parliamentary elections on July 4), as well as false stories about the Paris Olympics.
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One fake story that appeared on the London Crier website claimed that Zelensky had bought a mansion owned by King Charles III at a bargain price. The story was seen by hundreds of thousands of users on X and was shared by the official account of the Russian embassy in the UK. YouTube has already removed a video with AI voiceover posted on a little-known channel that was used as a source of fake news.
As for former cop Dugan, he hinted at his big plans: "Don't worry, the stakes are getting higher."
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