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Tag Archives: impersonating
Twitter suspends Kathy Griffin’s account for impersonating Elon Musk
Kathy Griffin was the latest casualty in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover as the comedian’s account was suspended Sunday.
Griffin, 62, changed her profile name to Musk, and appeared to be promptly banned from the social media site.
Despite her handle showing her own @kathygriffin name, the moniker by her blue checkmark said “Elon Musk” — which goes against the company policy against impersonation.
GIGI HADID DUMPS TWITTER AFTER MUSK BUYOUT, CALLS SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM A ‘CESSPOOL OF HATE’
The SpaceX founder indicated he was taking his “Chief Tweet” role seriously as he addressed fake accounts just weeks after officially acquiring Twitter for $44 billion following months of legal wrangling.
ELON MUSK SAYS TWITTER WILL SOON ALLOW USERS TO MONETIZE CONTENT, MAKE LONG-FORM POSTS
“Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody’ will be permanently suspended,” he wrote Sunday night.
“Previously, we issued a warning before suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.”
Musk is launching an $8 monthly subscription service where any Twitter user may be able to easily attain a blue checkmark symbol.
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The simple blue mark was previously used to verify government accounts, notable figures, politicians, journalists and other vetted users.
“Any name change at all will cause temporary loss of verified checkmark,” he added in the series of tweets.
The overhaul is designed in efforts to pay off company debt. Of Twitter’s nearly 237 million users, less than 450,000 accounts currently have the blue check mark symbols.
A class-action lawsuit was filed against the company by workers who claimed the layoffs violate federal law requiring 60 days’ notice for employees, also known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.
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J.K. Rowling fooled by Russians impersonating Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on a Zoom call
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J.K. Rowling was a victim of a prank, and the “Harry Potter” author was not amused.
A video surfaced this week of Rowling believing she was on a Zoom call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The author was conned by a Russian comedy duo, Vovan and Lexus. The group is notorious for tricking celebrities, however a spokesperson for Rowling called the video “edited” and “distasteful.”
J.K. ROWLING SLAMMED FOR DEFENDING CONCEPT OF BIOLOGICAL SEX: ‘IT ISN’T HATE TO SPEAK THE TRUTH’
“We can confirm that J.K. Rowling was a victim of a distasteful hoax video call by Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus, posing on camera as Ukraine’s President Zelensky,” the spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
“J.K. Rowling was approached to talk about her extensive charitable work in Ukraine through her charity Lumos, supporting children and families who have been affected by the current conflict in the region. The video, which has been edited, is a distorted representation of the conversation,” the spokesperson concluded.
Rowling’s Lumos charity has been aiding Ukraine children and families in the Zhytomyr region.
On Friday, the organization tweeted, “Our Ukraine response team is working tirelessly on the ground to provide material and psychological support to the children and families during this crisis.”
When the pranksters addressed her charity, they said, “I want to clarify where you are sending the money that Lumos has collected. … We want to buy a lot of weapons and missiles with your money to destroy Russian troops, I hope you are all for that.”
CELEBRITIES REACT TO J.K. ROWLING’S COMMENTS ABOUT TRANSGENDER PEOPLE
In the video, Rowling is seen replying, “We’ll look after the kids, but I really want Ukraine to have all of the arms it needs.”
Throughout the prank call, Vovan and Lexus made several “Harry Potter” refrences, even claiming the scar on Potter’s head looks like a “Z,” which has become of symbol of Russian support during their invasion of Ukraine. The Russian military has placed the symbol on several of their military tanks.
Vovan and Lexus asked Rowling if she would change the famous symbol to a Ukraine trident and she replied, “I will look into that. It might be good for me to do something with that myself on social media because I think that will get into the newspapers.”
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The two men, Vladimir “Vovan” Kuznetsov and Aleksei “Lexus” Stolyarov have fooled several celebrities in the past, including Elton John, President George W. Bush, Vice President Harris and Prince Harry.
The Russian pranksters referenced Rowling’s character, Albus Dumbledore, and asked the author if the character was gay, adding “hopefully not a transgender.” The comment was a jab to Rowling’s controversial comments on the transgender community.
The video was first flagged by the Rowling Library, a website dedicated to news surrounding the author.
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The pranksters ended the call with a trio appearing on the Zoom claiming they were members of “The Order of the Ukrainian Phoenix” that read the “Harry Potter” series to soldiers. They all wore matching purple t-shirts that read “Only Putin” in Russian.
J.K. Rowling Pranked by Russians Impersonating Zelensky via Zoom – The Hollywood Reporter
J.K. Rowling has fallen victim to a hoax by a prankster duo who tricked the Harry Potter author into believing she was having a Zoom call with the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
In the video below, first discovered online early Tuesday by The Rowling Library, Rowling was fooled by Russian comedy outfit Vovan and Lexus, who is infamous for prank-calling celebrities. Their past victims include Elton John, Prince Harry, Billie Eilish, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and George W. Bush.
The author’s spokesperson called the hoax “distasteful” and noted, “J.K. Rowling was approached to talk about her extensive charitable work in Ukraine, supporting children and families who have been affected by the current conflict in the region. The video, which has been edited, is a distorted representation of the conversation.”
During the 12-minute increasingly awkward video, the pranksters said the Harry Potter’s forehead scar looks like a “Z” which the Russian military has put on its tanks during its invasion of Ukraine. Rowling was asked if she would change the symbol to a Ukrainian trident (“I will look into that,” she assured. “It might be good for me to do something with that myself on social media because I think that will get into the newspapers.)
The duo pressed Rowling on whether Dumbledore was really gay and asked who he slept with, noting it was “hopefully not with a transgender.”
The duo told Rowling they were writing “Avada Kedavra” — the killing curse in the Harry Potter franchise — on missiles.
The Zelensky impersonator was apparently audio-only during the call (so he didn’t need to have any Polyjuice Potion to pull off the ruse). But at one point, they turned on their webcam to introduce “The Order of the Ukrainian Phoenix” – a trio wearing T-shirts that read “Only Putin” in Russian. “We read Harry Potter to the soldiers in the battalion … just don’t read them passages about half breeds [as] they are nationalists and do not like such people,” the pranksters said.
Rowling’s Lumos charity has been working in the Zhytomyr region to help vulnerable children and families and the author has been actively promoting its work on Twitter.
The pranksters said, “I want to clarify where you are sending the money that Lumos has collected … we want to buy a lot of weapons and missiles with your money to destroy Russian troops, I hope you are all for that.” Rowling replied, “We’ll look after the kids but I really want Ukraine to have all of the arms it needs.”
Beyond the specifics of the pranks themselves, Vovan and Lexus have been criticized in the past for often targeting high-profile people who are critical of Russian foreign policy, leaving some to suspect they’re state actors.
Rowling’s most recent work was co-writing and producing Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which recently started streaming on HBO Max.
Porsches, Gucci rings and billions of robocalls: Inside the PAC operation that raised millions by impersonating Donald Trump
He drives a black Porsche Panamera around Los Angeles at night, often to the soundtrack of club music. He lives in a luxury high-rise apartment downtown and parties with aspiring models at nightclubs. He posts shirtless selfies, displaying a prominent chest tattoo that reads, “God Will Give Me Justice.” He shows off his crystal-encrusted Gucci rings, Yves Saint-Laurent sunglasses and a handmade designer hat with his name engraved.
“Your life doesn’t need a purpose, just money,” Nox writes in one post.
Nox is an “award-winning writer” and “executive producer,” according to his online bio. In his LinkedIn accounts, he describes himself as an investor in “women-led ventures,” including a modeling agency and a beauty company that sells face masks.
But like so many things on the internet, “Matte Nox” is not who he appears to be. “Matte Nox” is the assumed name and online persona of Matthew Tunstall, a 34-year-old from Texas who over the past three years has raised millions of dollars operating two political action committees that impersonated the Trump campaign.
None of the money the two groups have raised went directly to Trump or his campaign during the 2020 cycle. Even though Tunstall reports on his federal filings that his PACs have spent approximately $407,000 toward supporting Trump, a close analysis of those independent expenditures shows that approximately $380,000 of that money was spent on robocalls and operating expenses; about $27,000 was spent on advertising.
Tunstall, meanwhile, has been paid nearly double what he claims to have spent on supporting Trump.
Tunstall told CNN at the time that the robocalls using Trump’s voice were the result of a technical error and that his PAC had ceased to use calls like it. But he kept at it and over the next two years built the most prolific political robocall campaign in the country, according to data shared with CNN from NoMoRobo, a widely used application that blocks robocalls.
Tunstall’s two Trump PACs have placed an estimated 3.48 billion robocalls since October 2019, according to NoMoRobo. That averages out to about 184 million robocalls every month to Americans’ phones across the country.
Tunstall did not reply to CNN’s numerous attempts to contact him for this story.
A system ripe for abuse
PACs have been around since the 1940s and were designed to pool donations in support of a candidate or a cause. But in recent years, so-called scam PACs have become more prevalent.
Adav Noti, the senior director of litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, says a scam PAC is typically seen as one that “exists primarily to raise money that is then paid to the PAC’s own operators rather than to engage in bonafide political activity.”
There is no hard-and-fast rule that limits how much an operator can pay themselves, nor is there a legal definition of what exactly constitutes a scam PAC, making the line between what’s legitimate and what’s not fuzzy and hard to enforce.
“Self-enrichment is the defining characteristic of a scam PAC, regardless of what they’re saying they’re doing or in fact doing with the money,” said Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at the watchdog group Common Cause. “Just saying that you spent the money on robocalls doesn’t negate allegations of scam PAC-i-ness.”
The Federal Election Commission, which regulates PACs, lacks criminal enforcement authority, leaving it up to the Department of Justice to bring prosecutions, and so far, the nation’s top law enforcement agency has focused on the most extreme violations, according to experts.
The Justice Department told CNN that it does not track the number of scam PACs it’s prosecuted. Noti, who tracks scam PACs closely, estimated that DOJ has prosecuted one to two cases a year over the last few years.
Experts who spoke to CNN said that Tunstall’s filings demonstrate the hallmarks of a scam PAC, which comes down to self-enrichment. His PACs appear to follow a simple, cyclical pattern: they raise money to pay for robocalls so they can raise more money to pay for more robocalls. Nearly all of the money not used to sustain the PACs goes toward paying Tunstall. Even the paperwork the PACs are supposed to file regularly with the FEC raises serious concerns, according to experts, and the PACs frequently miss reporting deadlines.
Tunstall has faced practically no consequences. The FEC has written his PACs more than two dozen letters raising issues with the PACs’ filings and has levied a little more than $14,000 in administrative fines against him. Tunstall has paid just $10 toward those fines and has avoided any civil or criminal penalties.
Tunstall’s operation is so egregious, it “could almost be construed as a performance art piece designed to showcase the FEC’s fecklessness,” said Rob Pyers, a campaign finance researcher who tracks scam PACs on Twitter.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash-on-hand have vanished off the ledger from one reporting period to the next,” said Pyers. “None of the expenditures during their first year of operation are accounted for, and about a third of the operating expenditures they have deigned to report have gone to enrich the PAC’s founder.”
To Pyers, though, the most recent amendment to Tunstall’s paperwork is another example of how his record-keeping is a “trainwreck.”
“Who knows what the cash situation actually looks like?” said Pyers.
“Hi, This is Donald Trump.”
When someone answers one of Tunstall’s robocalls, they are usually greeted by a recording of the former President saying, “Hi, this is Donald Trump.”
Typically, the calls splice together recordings of a series of public statements made by Trump. A narrator then urges listeners to donate to support Trump by pressing a number on their keypad. Those who do are transferred to a call center where they sometimes donate as little as $1 and as much as $8,000.
“This was a technical error if you heard this, there were many different variants that have been recently tested for different political ads regarding support for President Trump,” Tunstall wrote CNN in an email in 2019. “I’ve been instructed by multiple legal sources that using voice clips from politicians is acceptable and not considered ‘impersonating’ because politicians are public officials and do not have rights to their likeness like normal private citizens and celebrities do.”
Since then, the calls have included a sped-up recording at the very end that discloses the true nature of the robocall, telling listeners in a voice very quickly: “Paid for by Support American Leaders. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.”
The phone number listed for Tunstall’s PAC in the calls is not a working number. Nor are numbers on the website for Support American Leaders PAC. His PACs can only be contacted one way: if you receive a call and are connected to the call center soliciting donations.
The period after the 2020 election in which one PAC parroted election lies proved to be one of the most lucrative fundraising periods. In just a few weeks, Support American Leaders raised $536,000.
Tunstall paid himself almost $177,000 during that period.
Late filings and $500,000 in missing money
A closer look at Tunstall’s PACs’ FEC filings reveals, at best, late paperwork and, at worse, missing funds.
During 2020, quarterly filings were routinely submitted months after they were initially due to the FEC. In one case, the PAC missed an FEC filing deadline by eight months.
The FEC sent four letters to each of Tunstall’s PACs notifying them they failed to submit their 2020 reports on time and warned that the PACs could face administrative fines.
A CNN KFile examination of the Support American Leaders PAC filings reveals that between the spending, filings and cash-on-hand, more than $500,000 is unaccounted for.
Among the dozens of letters the FEC has sent to the two PACs, one letter specifically noted the discrepancies between the cash-on-hand numbers between the 2019 filings referenced.
The law forbids the commission from disclosing any audits or enforcement actions until after the process is completed.
A symptom of a broken system
Election law experts see PAC operators like Tunstall as a symptom of an FEC that over the past decade has become dysfunctional thanks to fierce partisan deadlock, rendering it incapable of using the few tools it does have to regulate scam PACs. The result is a corner of the election economy where Tunstall can brazenly defraud people of millions of dollars.
“People complain to the FEC all the time about [scam PACs]. It’s a scourge of the current finance system,” said Noti, of the Campaign Legal Center, who previously worked in the FEC general counsel’s office. “The FEC doesn’t crack down on anything, but this, they would crack down on if they could.”
“It’s a matter of getting a law on the books that would let the FEC do it,” Noti said.
It may be years until the public has a clearer picture on whether the FEC ends up taking any enforcement action against Tunstall because their enforcement actions are confidential until complete.
It’s also possible he also may shut down his PACs before they are able to.
Some experts speculate that Tunstall’s recent actions, including his decision to list a negative balance for his PAC, could be part of a potential exit strategy where he shuts down his robocall operation and declares bankruptcy. Other experts suggested Tunstall’s actions followed a pattern of egregious bookkeeping and that it was unclear what the recent filings meant.
But a worst-case scenario, according to Ryan, who heads the watchdog group Common Cause, would play out like this: the FEC fines would continue to grow but a PAC “so deep in the red could just shut down. It could close its bank account, close its office or P.O. Box and, for all intents and purposes, disappear,” said Ryan.
And because PACs are typically corporations, said Ryan, “The people who set up the PAC are only personally financially liable under campaign finance law if they’ve knowingly and willfully violated the law.”
Tunstall, meanwhile, could continue to escape consequences from the FEC and any creditors the PAC may owe money to.
CNN’s Peter Valdes-Dapena contributed to this story.