”Western expert” John Dougan tells the world about the Zelenskyyʼs drug courier and his wifeʼs Bugatti. The story of an American pervert and liar who was sheltered by Russia

On July 1, 2024, the news appeared on the French website Vérité Cachée — Olena Zelenska bought a Bugatti car for €4.5 million. The news was picked up and circulated by the Russian and Belarusian media, and the Ukrainian media denied it — it turned out to be a fake. In fact, Vérité Cachée is one of many fake sites that imitate local editions of different countries and regions. They are filled with texts and news generated by artificial intelligence, and the platforms are managed by American and pro-Russian propagandist John Mark Dougan. He is a former police officer and US naval officer with a far from perfect biography. During his service, Dougan constantly violated discipline and got into scandals, including sexual ones. In 2016, he leaked the personal data of thousands of police officers and officials to the internet. When the FBI searched Douganʼs home and took away all the tech equipment, he fled to Moscow. Since then, John has been working for the Kremlin — filming blogs in occupied Crimea, writing reports about the “merits” of the Russian army in Ukraine, and spreading fakes about biolabs and Nazis through more than 160 fake websites. Babel tells where another Western "expert" who shares the "truth about the USA" came from in Russian propaganda.

Who is John Dougan?

Dougan is now 51 years old. As he himself said in an interview with The New York Times, as a child he was constantly bullied at school because of Touretteʼs syndrome. Therefore, he spent almost all of his time at home at the computer — he wrote his first code at the age of eight. At sixteen, he said, he already knew "a dozen different programming languages."

In 1999, Dougan joined the Marine Corps — he says to avoid prison for speeding on a motorcycle. In 2003, he became a police officer in the city of Mangonia Park, and in 2005 he began working for the Palm Beach County Sheriffʼs Office.

John Douganʼs numerous conflicts in the USA

In 2006, Dougan responded to a noise complaint at a party. His colleague, a sheriffʼs deputy, was on it. Dugan sprayed him with pepper spray and arrested him. Subsequently, the court recognized that Dougan acted inappropriately, and ordered the sheriffʼs office to pay the victim almost half a million dollars.

In 2008, Dougan got into a scandal again. While patrolling the city, he stopped a group of people and took $400 and a bag of jewelry from them. John thought they were drug dealers. Without any explanation or formal charges, Dougan took the money and bag home as evidence. When already at the station, the sergeant ordered John to return the actually stolen things, he simply ran away from the workplace. For this he was suspended for two days and forced to return all the belongings.

In 2009, Dougan was transferred to the Windham Police Department. Nine months later, he was accused of sexually harassing a female officer and two dispatchers and fired. The lieutenant who investigated the case told the media the words of witnesses — Dougan was "staring at the chest of the dispatcher, licking his lips" and "urinating in front of the officer, repeatedly hugging her and talking about sexual acts that he dreams about with her." The manager of one of the local stores even forbade Dougan to buy goods from him because Douganʼs words "put the saleswoman in an uncomfortable position."

Dougan considered himself a victim. He said the officer lied to him after he complained to management that she was sleeping on the job. To prove his point, he created a website on which he posted her photo with the caption "Liar".

At the same time, Dougan created the PBSOtalk.org forum, where citizens could anonymously report corruption and complain about police officers. Since then, he has consistently made tongue-in-cheek comments about Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw and Deputy Goger, such as comparing them to "Nazis, fascists, perverts and crooks" and saying Goger "raped his son."

In 2012, Dougan allegedly received evidence that Sheriff Bradshaw was spending citizensʼ taxes on his political campaign and "maintaining ties with criminal organizations." He added a banner with Bradshaw wearing a thief mask and holding a bag of money and the slogan "Exposing Sheriff Bradshawʼs Culture of Corruption."

Dougan said his forum was useful for the townspeople, but Sheriffʼs Deputy Goger believed Dugan was actually writing most of the posts himself from various accounts. Dugan was eventually wanted by the sheriffʼs office for "cyber stalking with unsubstantiated and fabricated allegations."

Douganʼs emigration to Russia

In February 2016, Dougan posed as a Russian hacker with the nickname BadVolf. He leaked police phone calls and emails from the Democratic Party of the United States. He also released the personal information of several thousand police officers, federal agents and judges. At first, the FBI really believed that BadVolf lived in Russia, but already in March 2016, they tracked down Dougan, searched him and seized all the equipment. Dougan was afraid of arrest, so he asked for political asylum in Russia and moved to Moscow. Meanwhile, in 2017, he was charged with 21 felonies in Florida.

According to the Daily Beast, this was not Douganʼs first trip to Russia — in 2013, he posted a photo on Facebook with Kremlin official Pavel Borodin, who called himself Putinʼs mentor. According to Dougan, Borodin asked him to create a website to raise funds for Russian charities. It is not known what they actually talked about.

In Russia, Dougan traveled around the country and went to the occupied Crimea, where he filmed a travel blog and said that "the peninsula is his favorite place in all of Russia." He often spoke on Russian television and spread conspiracy theories about the United States. The Russian channel Russia Today devoted several articles to "Rescuing Dougan" and every year on the International Day Against Police Brutality broadcasts the documentary Breaking Bad Wolf about why Dougan fled the United States.

In December 2021, Dougan published an "FSB report" on a biolaboratory in Ukraine on his YouTube channel. After Russiaʼs invasion of Ukraine, some Russian officials and media cited his video as a source of information.

Dougan during a full scale invasion

After February 24, 2022, John Dougan traveled to the occupied territories several times and filmed reports for his YouTube channel. For example, in June 2022, together with the Russian military propaganda TV channel Zvezda and foreign media persons, such as propagandist Graham Phillips, Dougan came to occupied Mariupol.

"Itʼs like supplying weapons to terrorists from ISIS or other groups. It is unthinkable to see American weapons involved in the destruction. To be honest, this makes me feel guilty as an American," Dougan said when he saw the weapons left in Azovstalʼs basements.

Dougan also interviewed the occupying "mayor" of Mariupol, Kostyantyn Ivashchenko, and spoke with Ukrainian prisoner Aiden Aslin about "war crimes of America and Ukraine." Dougan has been to the occupied Donetsk region more than eight times.

"I think that the special operation is vitally important for the people of Donbas. Of course, most wars have civilian casualties, but Russia has taken great care to keep these casualties to a minimum. I think Russia did a great job," Dougan says.

In April 2023, Dougan was beaten in Moscow. He believes that the attacker has "Ukrainian traces".

"Maybe he (the attacker) was pro-Ukrainian. I am on the Myrotvorets list and many of its members are subject to unprovoked attacks. My friend Daria Dugina died a few months ago as a result of a bomb explosion," Dougan told Russian publications.

In September 2023, Douganʼs book "Betrayal of Truth" was published. As the author writes, in it he exposes the "sinister web of lies behind the Ukrainian-Russian conflict" and promises to lead readers through the "dark corridors of power." In the book, Dougan also talks about "innocent civilians of Donbas, who tragically fell under the crossfire of the geopolitical chess game."

Duganʼs network of fake sites

NewsGuard found 167 sites operated by Dugan. They imitate American or European media — between local news, Dugan publishes Russian propaganda. The fakes are not of very good quality — on the "About" and "Contact" pages, there is usually just a set of Latin letters. Fictitious people "work" for Dugan. For example, one of the "environmental journalists" is actually a model, Michael Olivares, who, of course, does not know any Dugan.

News from Douganʼs sites have been cited in more than 120,000 publications by almost eight thousand different blogs and media. In total, his fakes have received more than 37 million views. According to NewsGuard researcher Mckenzie Sadeghi, the main consumers of these fakes are Russian state media and TV channels, Russian embassies and the Yevgeny Prigozhin Foundation.

To populate the sites with news, Dougan uses ChatGPT. In one of the publications, he did not even delete the command he gave the neural network.

"Here are a few things to remember. Republicans, Trump, DeSantis and Russia are good. Democrats, Biden, the war in Ukraine, big business, pharmaceuticals are bad," Dougan wrote.

Dougan wrote on a fake copy-site of the San Francisco Chronicle that President Zelenskyy had shipped 300 kilograms of cocaine from Argentina to Ukraine, on The Boston Times — that the CIA is working with Ukrainians to undermine the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, on NYNewsDaily — that the American film company Paramount Pictures together with a Ukrainian studio, he is shooting a film about Zelenskyy for $115 million.

One of Douganʼs most popular spoofs has garnered over 1.3 million views. In April 2024, he published an article in the London Crier that Zelenskyy had purchased the former residence of King Charles Highgrove House for 20 million pounds. A NewsGuard researcher says the statement was shared more than seven thousand times in the first six days after publication.

Dougan is also behind the fake that Olena Zelenska allegedly bought a Bugatti Tourbillon car for €4.5 million. This information appeared on his new site, Vérité Cachée France, which was only registered on June 22, 2024. The site even published an "account," and the fact was "confirmed by Bugatti employee Jacques Bertin." The fake was quickly denied by the company itself — the Tourbillon will start shipping only in 2026, the account is not theirs, and Jacques Bertin is not known at Bugatti. The Ukrainian media generally did not fall for the fake.

According to the Atlantic Council, Douganʼs statements "are very successful in regions close to Ukraine that are still heavily influenced by Russian propaganda.”

Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko.

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