Benjamin Strick Profile picture
May 26, 2024 10 tweets 6 min read Read on X
In April, CNN journalists were led to the 'home' of Haitian gang lord Vitel’homme Innocent and interviewed him. He is on @FBIMostWanted's Top 10, with a bounty of up to $2 million.

I mapped their drive and found his home here: 18.5278, -72.2314. Here's how👇🧵
First, I did this because knowing the location of where a gang lord responsible for horrible violence is helpful, even if he might not be there after CNN visited. Vitel is the leader of Kraze Barye and is on the @FBIMostWanted list for taking hostages, and sanctioned by UN.
Image
Image
This is the footage I used to geolocate Vitel'Homme Innocent's house, where the interview was conducted. I'll go through some of the scenes to provide proofs of how I made the geographical matches, using Google Earth.

Source:
The first geolocation, and the easiest one thanks to the majestic mountain range surrounding Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, was at 01:04 of the video. We see a big wall, large factory roof, turn in the road, and a lovely mountain range. Location: 18.5447, -72.2359
Image
Image
The second geolocation was this brilliant little architectural oddity of the little street wall, that served its geolocatable purpose well.
Image
Image
The third and last on the route was the drive past this factory area, again we could see the mountain range in the background. But to narrow it down was this line of buildings and a little sand pile that was consistently present, even in past satellite imagery.
Image
Image
From studying the video quite closely, it's fairly clear that the roof would have been orange, given the colour in the video, and a lot of mansions have orange roofs in this area. The final area was just over 1.6km from the route videos, so it took a bit of scrolling to find.
Image
Image
Once finding the 'home' the CNN team met Vitel'homme Innocent at, it was fairly clear that was the location. Main giveaways were significant features such as the double triangle roof seen from the side, the entrance was at the end of the street, and construction next door. Image
One of the things that made this geolocation easier was a reference image I made of what the area would look like on a map, from what I could see in the footage. The image below shows just how much can be gleaned from footage alone, in comparison to the satellite image.
Image
Image
Wow this thread on geolocating a Haitian gang lord got a lot of traction.

Final note, this took me a few hours, and can be done by anyone willing to put in the time. If you want to learn how to do this type of research, I make free YouTube tutorials 👇
youtube.com/@bendobrown?si…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Benjamin Strick

Benjamin Strick Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @BenDoBrown

Dec 18, 2024
I have received a number of messages asking about the location of this IL-76 (RA-76502) from Russian Aviacon Zitotrans (usually responsible for arms cargo).

It is not landing in Sudan (alleged in the comments), but is landing in Faya-Largeau in northern Chad. More in thread 👇 Image
I identified an original and more clear version on TikTok (not hard if you want to find it). In it, we can see the registration number of the plane much more clearly, as well as the dune and cliffs in the background.
The registration, RA-76502 that had been owned by JSC Aviacon Zitotrans, named by US as "a Russian cargo airline that has handled cargo shipments for sanctioned Russian Federation defense entities". Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
Dec 1, 2024
This festive season I’m sharing a video every day for the next 24 days showing useful OSINT tools & techniques. Creating this OSINT Advent Series has been a lot of fun and I hope it’s helpful for the ever-growing OSINT community! 🎄👇
1. Searching Facebook with WhoPostedWhat.
2. Using AI to identify a car model in an image with Carnet.
Read 13 tweets
Oct 10, 2024
Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay. As digital investigators we're often not experiencing what we see online, in real life, but it can still affect many.

So to keep doing the important documentation and investigative work online, here's a few practical steps you can take.👇
1. When sharing graphic content with colleagues and friends, remove those previews and give a little graphic warning indicator. There's always a little 'X' in the corner to remove preview. Image
2. Consider changing the settings on your social media platforms so you're not absorbing horrific content while doomscrolling. You don't have to filter it out, but at least stop the autoplay. Image
Read 10 tweets
Sep 18, 2024
I was recently on a flight across Australia when I spotted this massive figure on the ground. It led me on a digital journey to find out what it was, how it got there and who made it.

I'm going to explain a bit more about what it is in this thread, and how I found out. 👇🧵
Image
Image
Without internet on the plane, I made a screenshot on my phone of the location (yes it was on flight mode) and later used flight tracking to pinpoint exactly where I saw it.

Using @flightradar24, I traced the path my plane took and found the spot!
Image
Image
Next stop: @googleearth 🗺️

I zoomed into the area and there it was — this huge humanoid figure etched in the Australian outback. Measuring 2.7km tall and covering an area of more than 1.7 square kilometres, it's a sight to behold.

Here's the location: -29.527084, 137.465400
Image
Image
Read 8 tweets
Sep 2, 2024
Despite our reporting last week on the fake network of pro-Trump MAGA accounts, there appears to be many more accounts actively posting the exact same content. This one, @brenda_otto_ with 18k+ followers, is stealing photos from an Australian Instagram model in Queensland.

Image
Image
Here's another fake MAGA account, @Tracy_Miller044, stealing images from a fashion blogger (a popular one too).

@Tracy_Miller044 - if you want to reach out and talk about your work, why you're running these campaigns etc, I'm open.
Image
Image
Here is @Sarah_Hickey__

Sarah is stealing the photos of a Czech Instagram influencer to create a persona claiming to be a MAGA republican conservative with 40k+ followers and a blue tick (which means it's apparently not misleading).

@Safety @GlobalAffairs @elonmusk
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 28, 2024
A network of fake accounts are posing as young American women, posting pro-Trump content and disinformation, but they’re hiding behind, and manipulating, the images of European fashion influencers.

Our latest investigation at @Cen4infoRes. Details in this thread 🧵👇 Image
Our full analysis can be seen at @Cen4infoRes here: . We also collaborated with @CNN to dig out the human stories behind those who had their photos stolen

Let's look at the some details below 👇info-res.org/post/unmasking…
edition.cnn.com/2024/08/28/eur…
One of the accounts is Eva. She lives in the US, and likes hanging out at the beach and posting to her 5000+ followers on X. Eva posts strong opinions against LGBTQ people and the US Democratic party and is a loyal supporter of former US president Donald Trump. Image
Read 21 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(