Russian Fake News Execs Sanctioned

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated two individuals and two entities for services they provided the Government of the Russian Federation (GoR) in connection with a foreign malign influence campaign, including attempting to impersonate legitimate media outlets.  

Nikolai Tupikin and Ilya  Gambashidze were involved in a persistent foreign malign influence campaign at the direction of the Russian Presidential Administration. SDA and Structura have been identified as key actors of the campaign, responsible for providing GoR with a variety of services, including the creation of websites designed to impersonate government organizations and legitimate media outlets in Europe. 

Leading into Fall 2022, Tupikin and  Gambashidze implemented a campaign that impersonated news websites, staged videos, and fake social media accounts. Specifically, via their companies,  SDA and Structura, the two created a sprawling network of over 60 websites that impersonated legitimate news organizations, and which used misleading social media accounts to amplify the content of the spoofed websites.

The fake websites appeared to have been built to carefully mimic the appearance of legitimate news websites. The fake websites included embedded images and working links to legitimate sites and even used the impersonated site’s cookie acceptance page.