Thread by @marcowenjones

🧵Thread 1/ OK, so we need to talk about Kevin (well, Steve Kevin)! Stand aside #TinderSwindler, meet the pro-Putin #TwitterSwindler. This is a thread about the wild crossover of romance scams & pro-Kremlin soc media propaganda

First up, meet Steve Kevin PhD
#UkraineRussianWar

2/ Steve has it all. A doctor who specializes in elbows, knee, all the joints, and erm, low [sic] back. He obviously loves kids, adults and erm, 'teen'. Oh yeah, he also loves Putin, and despite being an American (methinks), his English ain't so hot.

#Ukraine
#disinformation

3/ So Steve Kevin is standing with Putin, who, by the way, is not a warmonger like the West. He's not NATO, the EU, or the West....

....He's Putin 🇷🇺 ♥️

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation

4/ The eagle-eyed among you will notice that Steve Kevin's tribute to Putin garnered a lot of attention. 1231 likes, 226 RTs and 244 replies is nothing to scoff at.

I certainly wouldn't kick them out of bed.

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation

5/ So with those stats, Steve Kevin PhD must be some kind of big time influencer, both online and in the low back world right?

Well no, he has 31 followers, and only posted 86 times, despite having an account that's over 2 years old.

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation

6/ Indeed, apart from his recent diatribes against NATO (see below), his early tweets seem to be mostly about crypto ( 🙄🙄) . Scams or marketing, it's hard to tell.

But who is Steve Kevin?

#UkraineRussianWar

7/ Well, a reverse image search is, erm revealing. It led me to a Polish facebook group about dating scams. Here we see someone using the same picture and multiple aliases, including Ray Chandler, Raymond Douglas, James Scooott, Frank Wilson, Steven Cooper...

8/ And there are more scam sites, and more names, Henderson Leighton, James John, Stuart Hallam. In fact the only name he hasn't used is probably Vladimir Putin.

...He's not Putin🇷🇺💔

#UkraineRussiaWar

9/ So what's going on? Well firstly it's still not clear who is in the original photo, but it's certainly not Steve 'low back' Kevin from Atlanta. I found his tweet by searching for tweets with high engagement on the 'i stand with Putin' hashtag. This is important because...

10/ a characteristic of the hashtag is that many of the most popular tweets are accounts with few followers, and few tweets - which is suspicious. Steve Kevin is just one of many impersonator 'fake' accounts that are promoting pro-Russian propaganda
#UkraineRussianWar

11/ Who exactly is behind it is not clear. But the modus operandi appears to be for sock puppet/fake accounts/trolls (won't get bogged down in nomenclature) to promote tweets by these other fake accounts. The numbers are in the thousands.
#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation

12/ I saw similar tactics in tweets promoting the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed. Literally thousands of booster bots and fake accounts. See here for more details

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1483874817761849344

#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation

13/ So just remember. Steve Kevin is likely one of many thousands of fake accounts or sock puppets boosting 'I stand with Putin'. He's not really an elbow teen doctor.

He's not even really Steve Kevin.

He's....

He's Putin 🇷🇺♥️
#UkraineRussianWar
#disinformation