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G'morning, Manhattan! Here's how @jsrailton, @insyria, & @citizenlab outwitted a group of undercover operatives, turned the tables on them in a midtown restaurant & brought me along for the ride:
apnews.com/9f31fa2aa72946…
Also, a thread of some of the reporting that went into this:
apnews.com/9f31fa2aa72946…
Also, a thread of some of the reporting that went into this:
-@citizenlab knew well before I got involved that these people weren't who they said they were. Almost immediately after Bahr Abdul Razzak met someone calling themselves Gary Bowman in Toronto, for example, the group knew the person was legitimate. Here's Gary's LinkedIn page: 
Oops that should read "illegitimate" above, of course.
Here's Bowman's profile pic. Note that it's in black-and-white, that it's taken at an angle & that he's wearing sunglasses. Among other things, that makes it harder to run through a facial recognition search engine.
Here's Bowman's profile pic. Note that it's in black-and-white, that it's taken at an angle & that he's wearing sunglasses. Among other things, that makes it harder to run through a facial recognition search engine.
The setting for the photo is interesting too: It looks like some kind of a field & he seems to have taken the picture from the inside of a farm vehicle's cab. No recognizable features behind him (or in the reflection of his glasses.)
Bahr confirmed that this man was the same person who met him at the Shangri-La Hotel in Toronto. @jsrailton was certain the man wasn't who he said he was. But how could I prove it? After all, Bowman had a slick website, flame-tech[.]com with a snazzy logo & a hip looking office.
And there there was the company's prestigious addresses in the Torre de Cristal, one of Europe's tallest buildings. I didn't want to call them up or email them - that might tip whoever it was off. So here's what we did:
No. 1 dig up the records.
If this is a real company, then it has to be registered somewhere. So I checked Orbis, which has records on some 300 million companies worldwide. We found no matches in Spain for FlameTech. And just to be sure, @aritzparra check Madrid's registry too.
If this is a real company, then it has to be registered somewhere. So I checked Orbis, which has records on some 300 million companies worldwide. We found no matches in Spain for FlameTech. And just to be sure, @aritzparra check Madrid's registry too.
No. 2 check the phone book.
Bowman claimed to be living in Madrid. We tried to look him up, but there was no Madrid-based person by that name in Spain's Páginas Blancas.
Bowman claimed to be living in Madrid. We tried to look him up, but there was no Madrid-based person by that name in Spain's Páginas Blancas.
No. 3 show up in person.
Here's where the wide reach & resources of the @AP come into play. It doesn't matter where it is in the world, we can show up in person. So we did. We visited Madrid's Crystal Tower high-rise. Here's a pic:
apimages.com/metadata/Index…
Here's where the wide reach & resources of the @AP come into play. It doesn't matter where it is in the world, we can show up in person. So we did. We visited Madrid's Crystal Tower high-rise. Here's a pic:
apimages.com/metadata/Index…
As the story states, no trace of FlameTech was to be found at the skyscraper. And, strangely enough, the company is starting to vanish from the internet too. Here's what's left of flame-tech[.].com:
Moral of the story: A fancy website, LinkedIn pages, a Crunchbase entry do not a real company make. It's old-fashioned, but check the phone book, pull the corporate registry records and, where possible, show up in person. (Or get someone to do it for you.)
This is threading weird (or not threading) so here’s the rest of it: 🧵
