Russian indictments (Fluff Edition)

[Boxslinger11]

Rush says it is all a left wing liberal conspiracy.

what do you think it is or are you gonna just repeat what you heard from them?

 

[cosmo1]

Well, when there's a troll farm of 300 people with a budget of $1.5 mil/month it's possible to steer a conversation.

Still need the sheep to read the propaganda.

 

[Boxslinger11]

Still need the sheep to read the propaganda.

we will get to that part just wait

 

[It will be fine]

Still need the sheep to read the propaganda.

The Trump campaign would retweet and reenforce the narratives being propagated by the trolls. Like Trump retweeting the crazy anti-Muslim British group last month.

The Russian trolls are everywhere, imagine how many different sites you could visit if it was your job 10 hours a day.

 

[Boxslinger11]

14-24 is just listing some defendants and their position in the organization ill just grab a few that i find interesting....

15. Defendant ALEKSANDRA YURYEVNA KRYLOVA (Крылова Александра Юрьевна) worked for the ORGANIZATION from at least in or around September 2013 to at least in or around November 2014. By approximately April 2014, KRYLOVA served as director and was the ORGANIZATION’s third-highest ranking employee. In 2014, KRYLOVA traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform the ORGANIZATION’s operations.

16. Defendant SERGEY PAVLOVICH POLOZOV (Полозов Сергей Павлович) worked for the ORGANIZATION from at least in or around April 2014 to at least in or around October 2016. POLOZOV served as the manager of the IT department and oversaw the procurement of U.S. servers and other computer infrastructure that masked the ORGANIZATION’s Russian location when conducting operations within the United States.

19. Defendant ROBERT SERGEYEVICH BOVDA (Бовда Роберт Сергеевич) (“R. BOVDA”) worked for the ORGANIZATION from at least in or around November 2013 to at least in or around October 2014. R. BOVDA served as the deputy head of the translator project, among other positions. R. BOVDA attempted to travel to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform the ORGANIZATION’s operations but could not obtain the necessary visa.

20. Defendant DZHEYKHUN NASIMI OGLY ASLANOV (Асланов Джейхун Насими Оглы) A/K/A JAYHOON ASLANOV A/K/A JAY ASLANOV joined the ORGANIZATION by at least in or around September 2014. ASLANOV served as head of the translator project and oversaw many of the operations targeting the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ASLANOV was also listed as the general director of Azimut LLC, an entity used to move funds from CONCORD to the ORGANIZATION.

22. Defendant GLEB IGOREVICH VASILCHENKO (Васильченко Глеб Игоревич) worked for the ORGANIZATION from at least in or around August 2014 to at least in or around September 2016. VASILCHENKO was responsible for posting, monitoring, and updating the social media content of many ORGANIZATION-controlled accounts while posing as U.S. persons or U.S. grassroots organizations. VASILCHENKO later served as the head of two sub-groups focused on operations to interfere in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

 

[Boxslinger11]

The Trump campaign would retweet and reenforce the narratives being propagated by the trolls. Like Trump retweeting the crazy anti-Muslim British group last month.

The Russian trolls are everywhere, imagine how many different sites you could visit if it was your job 10 hours a day.

and they got paid to do this 10 hours a day smh

 

[Boxslinger11]

Object of the Conspiracy
28. The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election

 

[Boxslinger11]

29. Starting at least in or around 2014, Defendants and their co-conspirators began to track and study groups on U.S. social media sites dedicated to U.S. politics and social issues. In order to gauge the performance of various groups on social media sites, the ORGANIZATION tracked certain metrics like the group’s size, the frequency of content placed by the group, and the level of audience engagement with that content, such as the average number of comments or responses to a post.

 

[Boxslinger11]

30.

a. KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA, together with other Defendants and coconspirators, planned travel itineraries, purchased equipment (such as cameras, SIM cards, and drop phones), and discussed security measures (including “evacuation scenarios”) for Defendants who traveled to the United States.

b. To enter the United States, KRYLOVA, BOGACHEVA, R. BOVDA, and another co-conspirator applied to the U.S. Department of State for visas to travel. During their application process, KRYLOVA, BOGACHEVA, R. BOVDA, and their coconspirator falsely claimed they were traveling for personal reasons and did not fully disclose their place of employment to hide the fact that they worked for the ORGANIZATION.

c. Only KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA received visas, and from approximately June 4, 2014 through June 26, 2014, KRYLOVA and BOGACHEVA traveled in and around the United States, including stops in Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York to gather intelligence. After the trip, KRYLOVA and BURCHIK exchanged an intelligence report regarding the trip.

 

[Boxslinger11]

32. Defendants and their co-conspirators, through fraud and deceit, created hundreds of social media accounts and used them to develop certain fictitious U.S. personas into “leader(s) of public opinion” in the United States

33. ORGANIZATION employees, referred to as “specialists,” were tasked to create social media accounts that appeared to be operated by U.S. persons. The specialists were divided into day-shift and night-shift hours and instructed to make posts in accordance with the appropriate U.S. time zone. The ORGANIZATION also circulated lists of U.S. holidays so that specialists could develop and post appropriate account activity. Specialists were instructed to write about topics germane to the United States such as U.S. foreign policy and U.S. economic issues. Specialists were directed to create “political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with (the) social and economic situation and oppositional social movements.”

 

[Boxslinger11]

34. Defendants and their co-conspirators also created thematic group pages on social media sites, particularly on the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram. ORGANIZATIONcontrolled pages addressed a range of issues, including: immigration (with group names including “Secured Borders”); the Black Lives Matter movement (with group names including “Blacktivist”); religion (with group names including “United Muslims of America” and “Army of Jesus”); and certain geographic regions within the United States (with group names including “South United” and “Heart of Texas”). By 2016, the size of many ORGANIZATION-controlled groups had grown to hundreds of thousands of online followers.

35. Starting at least in or around 2015, Defendants and their co-conspirators began to purchase advertisements on online social media sites to promote ORGANIZATION-controlled social media groups, spending thousands of U.S. dollars every month. These expenditures were included in the budgets the ORGANIZATION submitted to CONCORD.

 

[Boxslinger11]

36. Defendants and their co-conspirators also created and controlled numerous Twitter accounts designed to appear as if U.S. persons or groups controlled them. For example, the ORGANIZATION created and controlled the Twitter account “Tennessee GOP,” which used the handle @TEN_GOP. The @TEN_GOP account falsely claimed to be controlled by a U.S. state political party. Over time, the @TEN_GOP account attracted more than 100,000 online followers.

38. Defendants and their co-conspirators also regularly evaluated the content posted by specialists (sometimes referred to as “content analysis”) to ensure they appeared authentic—as if operated by U.S. persons. Specialists received feedback and directions to improve the quality of their posts. Defendants and their co-conspirators issued or received guidance on: ratios of text, graphics, and video to use in posts; the number of accounts to operate; and the role of each account (for example, differentiating a main account from which to post information and auxiliary accounts to promote a main account through links and reposts).

 

[Boxslinger11]

39. To hide their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, Defendants and their coconspirators—particularly POLOZOV and the ORGANIZATION’s IT department—purchased space on computer servers located inside the United States in order to set up virtual private networks (“VPNs”). Defendants and their co-conspirators connected from Russia to the U.S.-based infrastructure by way of these VPNs and conducted activity inside the United States— including accessing online social media accounts, opening new accounts, and communicating with real U.S. persons—while masking the Russian origin and control of the activity.

41. In or around 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators also used, possessed, and transferred, without lawful authority, the social security numbers and dates of birth of real U.S. persons without those persons’ knowledge or consent. Using these means of identification, Defendants and their co-conspirators opened accounts at PayPal, a digital payment service provider; created false means of identification, including fake driver’s licenses; and posted on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts using the identities of these U.S. victims. Defendants and their co-conspirators also obtained, and attempted to obtain, false identification documents to use as proof of identity in connection with maintaining accounts and purchasing advertisements on social media sites.

 

[Boxslinger11]

43. By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.

• a. On or about February 10, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators internally circulated an outline of themes for future content to be posted to ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Specialists were instructed to post content that focused on “politics in the USA” and to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump—we support them).”

• b. On or about September 14, 2016, in an internal review of an ORGANIZATIONcreated and controlled Facebook group called “Secured Borders,” the account specialist was criticized for having a “low number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton” and was told “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton” in future posts

 

[burrheadd]

Full text of the Russia indictment

Spooooooky stuff

direct link to pdf of indictment here https://www.justice.gov/file/1035477/download

Way to friend’in long

Give us the TLDR version

 

[Boxslinger11]

46. In or around the latter half of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through their ORGANIZATION-controlled personas, began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate.

• a. On or about October 16, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to post the following message: “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”

• b. On or about November 3, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased an advertisement to promote a post on the ORGANIZATION-controlled Instagram account “Blacktivist” that read in part: “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.”

• c. By in or around early November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the ORGANIZATION-controlled “United Muslims of America” social media accounts to post anti-vote messages such as: “American Muslims [are] boycotting elections today, most of the American Muslim voters refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton because she wants to continue the war on Muslims in the middle east and voted yes for invading Iraq.”

 

[Boxslinger11]

49. To pay for the political advertisements, Defendants and their co-conspirators established various Russian bank accounts and credit cards, often registered in the names of fictitious U.S. personas created and used by the ORGANIZATION on social media. Defendants and their coconspirators also paid for other political advertisements using PayPal accounts.

50. The political advertisements included the following:

 

[Boxslinger11]

53. In or around late June 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the Facebook group “United Muslims of America” to promote a rally called “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims” held on July 9, 2016 in the District of Columbia. Defendants and their co-conspirators recruited a real U.S. person to hold a sign depicting Clinton and a quote attributed to her stating “I think Sharia Law will be a powerful new direction of freedom.” Within three weeks, on or about July 26, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators posted on the same Facebook page that Muslim voters were “between Hillary Clinton and a hard place.”

 

[Boxslinger11]

BUT WAIT THERES MORE

54. In or around June and July 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the Facebook group “Being Patriotic,” the Twitter account @March_for_Trump, and other ORGANIZATION accounts to organize two political rallies in New York. The first rally was called “March for Trump” and held on June 25, 2016. The second rally was called “Down with Hillary” and held on July 23, 2016.

• a. In or around June through July 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators purchased advertisements on Facebook to promote the “March for Trump” and “Down with Hillary” rallies.

• b. Defendants and their co-conspirators used false U.S. personas to send individualized messages to real U.S. persons to request that they participate in and help organize the rally. To assist their efforts, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through false U.S. personas, offered money to certain U.S. persons to cover rally expenses

• c. On or about June 5, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, while posing as a U.S. grassroots activist, used the account @March_for_Trump to contact a volunteer for the Trump Campaign in New York. The volunteer agreed to provide signs for the “March for Trump” rally.

 

[Boxslinger11]

55. In or around late July 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the Facebook group “Being Patriotic,” the Twitter account @March_for_Trump, and other false U.S. personas to organize a series of coordinated rallies in Florida. The rallies were collectively referred to as “Florida Goes Trump” and held on August 20, 2016.

• d. Defendants and their co-conspirators also used false U.S. personas to ask real U.S. persons to participate in the “Florida Goes Trump” rallies. Defendants and their co-conspirators asked certain of these individuals to perform tasks at the rallies.For example, Defendants and their co-conspirators asked one U.S. person to build a cage on a flatbed truck and another U.S. person to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform. Defendants and their co-conspirators paid these individuals to complete the requests.