Conspirador Norteño Profile picture
Data Scientist/Musician/Participant in the General Confusion @trutherbotprop Resist autocracy and research/counter disinformation. I serve the realm.

Dec 20, 2021, 13 tweets

Sometimes inauthentic accounts are difficult to spot, but this is not one of those times. @CheiaKeeta (permanent ID 1432532435338629124) has helpfully used the #NewProfilePic hashtag to document a history of stealing multiple people's photos and using them as profile pics.

Although @CheiaKeeta claims to be an ICU nurse in New York, the two "nurse selfies" posted by the account depict two different people, neither of whom appears to work in a New York ICU. (@CheiaKeeta removed name/employer info from the pics in a possible attempt at obfuscation.)

Casting additional doubt on @CheiaKeeta's claims to be a New York ICU nurse is a tweet stating that 33 COVID patients died in @CheiaKeeta's unit on Sept 30, 2021. Since the entirety of NYC experienced 19 COVID deaths on the day in question, this appears to be false.

Another problem: in order to work 15 years as a nurse while not having been born in the 1980s, @CheiaKeeta would've had to have graduated nursing school at age 16 or younger.

The @CheiaKeeta account's use of stolen photos doesn't stop with "selfies" and profile pics. @CheiaKeeta's photo shoot from last year and the alleged photos of @CheiaKeeta's pets are also plagiarized.

Unsurprisingly, both of @CheiaKeeta's alleged Christmas trees are random photos swiped from the Internet.

Since the account is politically focused, it's not surprising that @CheiaKeeta tweets about participating in protests and marches. The evidence of participation is fake, however - for example, this photo @CheiaKeeta allegedly took at a march in 2021 is actually from 2017.

Additionally, it is extremely unlikely that @CheiaKeeta's father is both a judge and 30-year FBI veteran. Also, prosecutors don't generally bring their own children with them to the courtroom for shits and giggles.

Also in the "extremely unlikely" department, @CheiaKeeta supposedly received a COVID vaccine booster in September, again in October, and yet again in November.

Despite the obvious inauthenticity of many aspects of the @CheiaKeeta account, it is being promoted frequently on follow lists - mostly on the political left, but also here and there on the right.

Although there exists ample reason to suspect certain members of Congress of participation in/foreknowledge of the January 6th insurrection, Ted Cruz and Joe Manchin are not among them. Despite this, @CheiaKeeta has multiple tweets alleging or insinuating their involvement.

One more thing: this does not appear to be the first attempt to create this fake persona. A similar-looking "nurse" account named @cheecierom (now suspended) helped push the "Bill Barr tried to visit Ghislaine Maxwell in jail" nonsense in July 2020.

In a possibly interesting coincidence, the first account to tweet the July 2020 Maxwell/Barr disinformation (@Baligubadle1, presently protected) is the first smaller account (fewer than 100,000 followers) that @CheiaKeeta followed.

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