Thread by @goddek

1/ Are you also sick of the Krassensteins pretending to be moral authorities while calling Trump the devil himself?

And did you know they owed their fame to running teen groupie accounts and making their living scamming people and selling teen p0rn domains?

A THREAD 🧵

2/ The Krassensteins' political careers didn’t begin with policy or journalism. Brian and Ed began by targeting teenage fan communities. Edward ran @bieberfanclubs, Brian ran @JONASBROTHER5. These accounts, followed by teen girls, were later renamed and repurposed for politics.

3/ What followed was buying high-follower accounts, especially fan pages. The strategy was simple: acquire reach, not earn it. They wanted ready-made audiences of emotionally engaged teens to convert into political influence. Btw. edbri871 stands for Ed & Brian. And 871? Well...

4/ Brian and Ed likely used follow-unfollow scripts—tools that mass-follow users to gain follow-backs, then unfollow non-returners. This violates X guidelines. Until recently, both followed exactly 506.3K accounts, a number that hints at automation, not organic growth.

5/ Following 500k+ users on X manually would take 29 days at 5 sec/follow, non-stop. Unfollowing non-reciprocators could add months. No one does this by hand. As a scientist, I see this as a calculated move to inflate popularity with tools, not build it through real engagement.

6/ Once their follower counts were artificially inflated, they rebranded the accounts. Ed became @EdKrassen, Brian became @krassenstein. Both jumped on the Trump-resistance train and became full-time reply guys under every Trump tweet to farm engagement.

7/ But before politics, their real income came from HYIPs — high-yield investment programs. These were Ponzi schemes promising big returns and leaving thousands of victims behind. They weren’t small-time players. They were literally working with the Russian mob to "scam people."

8/ Court documents show, that one of their partners was CSMFinance, asking users to install a “finance app” that was actually malware. This gave the operators backdoor access to victims' systems. A financial scam disguised as software, and people fell for it by the thousands.

9/ Another was ReProFinance. It used Liberty Reserve, an anonymous currency widely used in laundering. ReProFinance made lulling payments to early users to appear legitimate. It collapsed in 2012 after being exposed in fraud forums and watchdog lists.

10/ Next came “The Safe Depositary” — another Ponzi scheme. Same tactics: unrealistic returns, fake testimonials, and quiet vanishings. But the financial footprint didn’t vanish. It tied back to a $465,000 wire transfer connected to the Krassensteins’ property in Cape Coral.

11/ That money came from a Bank of America account in their name. It included $200,000 from their advertising business and a $365,000 CD redemption. Investigators found that most of these funds were traceable to HYIP proceeds. It wasn’t speculation. It is well-documented.

12/ Their homes were raided. They later agreed to civil forfeitures. No criminal convictions, as they most likely made a deal with the DOJ/FBI. And shortly afterward, they rebranded publicly as Trump’s loudest critics. Timing that shouldn’t be ignored and is highly suspicious.

13/ This is in particular suspicious as Brian and Ed (a.k.a. Uncle Awesome... WTF?) were outspoken Trump fans just a few years before becoming hardcore anti-Trumpers. So, what caused this 180-degree turn? I have my personal theories, which you can probably guess.

14/ More concerning is that they (edbri871) bought and sold underage teen p0rn domains, many with suggestive names like "17onlygirls" or "humiliatedschoolgirls," resembling trafficking patterns. These domains were publicly registered under their names and later sold and used.

15/ My research made waves, with @DailyMail reporting on it. @EdKrassen claimed the domain was for perfume/DVD ads, but @waybackmachine shows this is false for when they owned it.

16/ Ed Krassenstein even claimed to the article's journalist he didn’t specifically seek such domains, only purchasing domain bundles. The journalist then asked me for evidence, which I quickly supplied. Proof confirms Ed and Brian deliberately targeted teen domains for purchase.

17/ When I first exposed the Krassenstein brothers for owning such underage p0rn domains, Brian whined about not being able to censor me. People silenced and censored me during Covid for speaking the obvious, and I won’t let anyone cancel me for that again.

18/ Speaking of COVID: The Krassensteins’ COVID-era posts and statements mirrored their deceptive tactics, sounding like Big Pharma scripts and making no sense. Well, anyone foolish enough to trust them on medical questions has only themselves to blame.

19/ Another disturbing incident involves a deleted tweet from Brian in 2022, appearing to blackmail a DNC staffer named Becky. When confronting him, he claimed that he wanted to show how fast conspiracy theories spread over the internet. I call that bullshit.

20/ To defend himself, Brian released a video claiming he wrote an email to himself before sending the tweet, to prove it was a “conspiracy test.” But metadata showed the email timestamp had been tampered with, as I show in the clip below. So why did they try to blackmail Becky?

21/ Probably for the same reason as usual: exploiting any platform or tragedy to grow followers for profit. On Facebook, they ran manipulative pages and used the 2010 Haiti earthquake to launch groups, not for aid, but to game algorithms and monetize audiences.

22/ Another Krassenstein Facebook group promised to "empty their bank account" ($2,450) for Haiti at 10M fans, which is an unattainable goal to manipulate emotions. Once they got followers, they pushed @KrassenCast and sites. Did they empty their account? I doubt it.

23/ Currently, their scams seems to continue with nftz[.]me, hosted on malicious platforms flagged by VirusTotal for Loki Infostealer malware. It steals PII, crypto wallets—undetected by Smartscreen. Hosted in Germany, tied to Chinese and Eastern European crooks. Dirty as ever.

24/ Once a scammer, always a scammer. Even now, phishing emails are still being sent from their mail server, such as this reported email with the subject “Aztec Sex Rituals.” This public complaint is from 2023, so quite recently.

25/ Brian even repeatedly lied about deleting his X account, proving the Krassensteins’ deceit. Want them to vanish into obscurity? Mute their accounts, and share this thread to expose their scams and make it go viral. If you care about integrity, follow me instead.