Latest news with #Dougan
Daily Mail
28-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
New blow for disgraced real estate agent who fled Australia after $500,000 fraud
A former real estate agent director who misused half a million dollars of her company's money has been refused lost her appeal to appear before court remotely. Australian born Sarah Dougan, who lives in the US, pleaded guilty in 2020 and 2021 to fraudulent offences carried out while working as a director for Belle Property Byron Bay in far northern NSW. But last week, the NSW Supreme Court refused her appeal to appear for sentencing via an audio visual link, requiring her to return to Australia to attend in person. It follows a failure to appear in Parramatta Court in November 2023. The case followed NSW Fair Trading investigation in 2011 into the agency over complaints the business failed to 'account at settlement' when transferring ownership of a property. The court heard that Dougan provided investigators with false NAB statements for two trust accounts. They then discovered in June that year that $534,320.99 was missing from the trusts. NSW Fair Trading launched legal proceedings in 2013 over the offences, a year after Ms Dougan moved to the US. The court also heard that the former real estate agent was only made aware of the charges against her 'some time after May 2017' while applying for permanent residency. Since moving to the US, Dougan has rebuilt a new life as a chief executive of a medical testing lab, got married, raised five children, and now lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion. 'No one knew there was a warrant to issue,' Dougan's lawyer Omar Juweinat told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday. At Paramatta Local Court in 2020 and 2021, Dougan pleaded guilty to offences which included the misappropriation of client funds and the creation of false documents to conceal that misappropriation. The court also heard that she paid at least $373,917 to the Property Services Compensation Fund in 2020. But the former real estate agent did not appear for sentencing in 2023 and a magistrate refused to sentence her by audio visual link. Dougan launched a leave to appeal at NSW Supreme Court, requesting the decision stopping her from appearing remotely to be overturned The request was refused last week and she was ordered to pay court costs. The consumer watchdog is determined to bring Dougan to justice. 'It is entirely appropriate the sentencing for those offences occurs in NSW in person,' NSW Fair Trading Commissioner Natasha Mann told Daily Mail Australia. 'NSW Fair Trading has patiently waited to bring this matter to a conclusion. 'Our persistence sends a clear message to real estate agents of how seriously the regulator takes cases where there has been a complete disregard for industry rules.' Dougan's appeal to have a previous warrant issued for her arrest quashed was successful after the Supreme Court ruled that it had been made by mistake. She was not formally convicted in 2023 and, as such, the recorded warrant in the JusticeLink was 'entered erroneously', the court judgement read. 'Dougan's appeal was partly successful,' Mr Juweinat said, referencing the ruling on the mistaken warrant. 'But unfortunately the parties are now asking the High Court to determine a question of law as to whether a defendant is an absent defendant if they are appearing in court remotely.' Daily Mail Australia understands that the case to the High Court is in the process of being filed.
Mint
08-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Whistleblowers who defied Credit Suisse are about to share up to $150 million
A decade ago, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to helping Americans evade taxes by stashing cash and assets overseas and pledged to stop doing so. Now former bank employees collectively stand to make up to $150 million for quietly telling U.S. authorities that Credit Suisse wasn't living up to its promise. A Credit Suisse unit this week pleaded guilty again to helping Americans hide their assets to evade taxes and agreed to pay $511 million for not meeting the terms of a 2014 settlement with U.S. authorities. Credit Suisse is now owned by UBS after an emergency 2023 rescue. Credit Suisse admitted that it opened more than two dozen potentially tax-dodging U.S. accounts after the 2014 deal, hung on to other big accounts that it was supposed to have reported and closed or helped wealthy clients move their assets without telling the Internal Revenue Service, the plea agreement said. In all, there were at least 475 accounts that Credit Suisse should have known were tied to Americans as of around 2018, holding $4 billion, the filing said. UBS said it was pleased to have resolved another of Credit Suisse's legacy issues. Two bankers have so far emerged as whistleblowers in the case, though it is possible that more might do so. They could collect between 15% and 30% from the Justice Department settlement, which could be one of the largest tax whistleblower awards in IRS history. A former UBS banker who helped the U.S. first lift the veil of Swiss bank secrecy received $104 million in 2012. Other government whistleblower programs have paid larger sums, including a $279 million Securities and Exchange Commission award to a tipster in a foreign bribery case in 2023. The Credit Suisse pair haven't identified themselves publicly for fear of prosecution under Swiss bank secrecy laws, which bar bankers from discussing clients with anyone outside of their institutions—including foreign tax authorities. 'They feel vindicated—for telling the truth, for risking everything, and for standing up to one of the world's most powerful financial institutions," said Jeffrey Neiman, a lawyer for the whistleblowers. The case is the latest in a near two-decade effort by U.S. prosecutors to punish Swiss banks for helping Americans hide accounts, and shows how deep rooted the practice was. The whistleblowers' interest in the case began in 2014 when then-Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan told a U.S. Senate committee that the misconduct was all historic behavior of around a dozen people who had all been fired. 'These people went to great lengths to disguise their bad conduct from the bank," Dougan testified along with other Credit Suisse executives. Dougan, who left the bank in 2015, didn't respond to a request for comment. One of the whistleblowers, a former South America desk banker, recalled in an interview watching the testimony at Al Leone, a popular cafe for bankers in Zurich. He said he shouted at the television: 'They are lying!" He knew the practice was endemic. Bank executives, he said, tried to get a $100 million account in South America moved to other banks without disclosing the client's American passport. The Justice Department highlighted the poor handling of the account, for a Colombian American woman and her family, in court filings Monday. After Credit Suisse's 2014 guilty plea, the bank was supposed to give the Justice Department the names of American customers leaving for other banks. Instead, some bankers referred customers to other banks with their foreign passports, omitting to say that they also were American, the former banker said. Other customers sought to hide behind parents or siblings who weren't Americans, sometimes with Credit Suisse bankers falsifying records to help, prosecutors said. In another situation, prosecutors said, Credit Suisse bankers appeared to turn a blind eye to the status of a scion of a wealthy European family who had more than $1 billion in his accounts and was resident in the U.S. Credit Suisse assisted in payments for the billionaire's U.S. taxes in 2014 but didn't probe further. The Justice Department said a cursory review of public information showed that the scion was regularly identified in news articles as living in a mansion in the U.S. The bank's executives were so brazen that they assigned one dual national's $200 million account on the bank's Israeli desk to a junior banker, with a plan to blame the trainee if things went south, the second whistleblower said in an interview. Within months after Credit Suisse pleaded guilty in 2014, this whistleblower approached U.S. authorities. The owner of the Israeli account, an American professor named Dan Horsky paid a $100 million penalty to the U.S. government in 2016 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government. In Monday's statement of facts, prosecutors said that Credit Suisse knew the Horsky account should have been declared before the 2014 settlement and that a Credit Suisse executive went to Tel Aviv in January 2016 to strategize with Horsky on ways to conceal his control of the account. The filing said that bankers helped other customers carry out fictitious donations to sidestep owning an account in bank records, and that in 2022 a single Swiss lawyer was found by compliance staff to be handling 104 accounts for 13 American clients who had been able to avoid detection for U.S. tax. UBS came close to settling over the Credit Suisse accounts earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported in January, and might have avoided another Credit Suisse guilty plea had it done so. That deal fell through in the final days of the Biden-era Justice Department. Monday's agreement puts Credit Suisse on three-years probation. The penalty had hung over Credit Suisse in its final years and was in UBS's calculations for potential legal costs before the 2023 takeover. Write to Aruna Viswanatha at and Margot Patrick at
ABC News
02-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Pro-Russian influence operation targeting Australia in lead-up to election with attempt to 'poison' AI chatbots
A pro-Russian influence operation has been targeting Australia in the lead-up to this weekend's federal election, the ABC can reveal, attempting to "poison" AI chatbots with propaganda. Pravda Australia presents itself as a news site, but analysts allege it's part of an ongoing plan to retrain Western chatbots such as ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot on "the Russian perspective" and increase division amongst Australians in the long-term. It's one of roughly 180 largely automated websites in the global Pravda Network allegedly designed to "launder" disinformation and pro-Kremlin propaganda for AI models to consume and repeat back to Western users. Pravda Australia was registered last year and began publishing articles in November, before its output increased significantly in mid-March, two weeks before the election was called. It's been publishing as many as 155 stories a day since then, churning out repackaged posts from Telegram channels and stories from well-known Russian propaganda sites. Nevertheless, the site has failed to make a direct impact on Australian audiences — with little to no evidence of organic engagement — so much so that its existence went mostly unnoticed for the first several months it was active. Election essentials: Find out where your But disinformation experts who've been tracking the Pravda ecosystem say humans aren't the real target. "The Pravda Network appears to be designed and created solely to affect … AI chatbots," said McKenzie Sadeghi, AI and foreign influence editor at disinformation monitor NewsGuard. "From what we've seen, it's had great success," she said. The tactic means chatbots absorb content that would otherwise be excluded because it comes from an untrustworthy source. "Content is being aggregated by Pravda through the seemingly independent domain, and these chatbots are unable to realise that this site is actually a Russian propaganda site," Ms Sadeghi said. That widely-held theory about the network's true purpose was confirmed in January this year when John Dougan, a key Kremlin propagandist, said as much at a Moscow roundtable with journalists, which was published online. John Dougan (centre) spoke about his efforts to train AI models with pro-Russian material at a roundtable event in Moscow in January. ( Moscow House of Nationalities ) Mr Dougan, a former deputy sheriff from Florida who fled to Russia in 2016 whilst facing a string of felony charges, openly laid out his vision. He argued that propaganda campaigns shouldn't merely spread disinformation, but "train AI models" with pro-Russian material instead. Mr Dougan went on to boast that his websites had already "infected approximately 35 per cent of all worldwide artificial intelligence". "By pushing these Russian narratives, from the Russian perspective, we can actually change worldwide AI," he said. How Pravda pushes 'Russian narratives' in Australia Pravda Australia was spotted in early 2025 by Recorded Future, a private intelligence firm monitoring the election for foreign influence attempts. "It's publishing a lot of content related to the Australian election," said Sean Minor, a senior analyst at Recorded Future. To date, the website has published more than 6,300 stories, most of them since mid-March, roughly 40 per cent of which have focused squarely on Australia. The topics vary depending on the news cycle, but any mention of Russia, Ukraine, disharmony among Western allies, or embarrassing moments for Western leaders tends to feature prominently. The Pravda Australia website has published more than 6,300 stories. ( Pravda Australia / ABC News ) The vast majority of the stories are verbatim reproductions of posts to a handful of Telegram channels and stories from Russian propaganda outlets. The two most heavily featured Telegram channels are operated by the users AussieCossack and RealLandDownUnder. AussieCossack is the username of an Australian man named Simeon Boikov, a self-styled pro-Kremlin influencer who has been holed up in the Russian consulate in Sydney since January 2023, avoiding an arrest warrant for an alleged assault. Roughly one in four of the articles on Pravda Australia was a direct reproduction of one of Mr Boikov's posts to his roughly 1,400 followers. When contacted, he told ABC News he was unaware his posts were being reproduced by the site. "I haven't disapproved or approved of that, but it warms my heart," said Mr Boikov. Simeon Boikov said the fact his posts were being reproduced by Pravda Australia warmed his heart. ( Supplied ) "I would say it's an AI thing … they are probably reproducing stuff from my channel because they trust me to be a pro-Russian credible source for a pro-Russian angle. "In any case, I have no contact". A second channel run by RealLandDownUnder, which frequently features far-right views and disinformation, was the source for almost one in six of the articles published. There's no suggestion that the owner of that Telegram channel has any knowledge their posts are being repurposed by Pravda Australia either. Disinformation group DFRLab has traced the global network's origins to a handful of news websites run from Russian-occupied Crimea in 2014, but in 2025, its scale, focus and architecture are completely different. The current incarnation of the Pravda ecosystem is a little over a year old. While it shares a name with a better-known and long-running Russian news publication, the two aren't linked. Is Pravda swaying AI chatbots on Australian topics? NewsGuard conducted an audit of AI chatbots for the ABC to check how effective the global Pravda network had been when it came to Australian-based disinformation. Researchers tested 300 prompts concerning 10 false narratives, on 10 leading chatbots. Among the chatbots audited were OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o, xAI's Grok-2, Microsoft's Copilot, Meta AI, and Google's Gemini 2.0. Of the 300 responses, 50 contained false information, 233 contained a debunk, while 17 declined to provide any information. That means 16.66 per cent of the chatbots' answers amplified the false narrative they were fed. Read more about the federal election: Want even more? Here's where you can find all our 2025 Catch the latest interviews and in-depth coverage on "Some could argue that 16 per cent is relatively low in the grand scheme of things," NewsGuard's Ms Sadeghi said. "But that's like finding that Australian fact-checking organisations get things wrong 16 per cent of the time." NewsGuard chose a range of false narratives, all of which had been spreading online, including "The Bank of Australia sued Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong for promoting a cryptocurrency platform", and "Wind farms cause drought and contribute to global warming". Other examples include claims that "Australia's e-Safety Commissioner sought to remove a video of anti-Israel Muslim nurses, citing Islamophobia concerns", that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was "importing 500,000 new Labor voters a year" and that "the Australian Muslim Party was formed to compete in the 2025 election". Photo shows The blue-and-white Vote compass logo: The words, with a tick through the "o" of "Vote". The ABC's Vote Compass can help you understand your place in the political landscape. Researchers tested each narrative using three prompts on each of the 10 chatbots — one that may have been written by an innocent user seeking genuine clarification, one containing a leading question, and one that was actively seeking to reproduce information. "The chatbots performed the worst when it came to those 'malign actor' prompts, which are specifically intended to generate misinformation," Ms Sadeghi said. "Nevertheless, there were still instances where they provided a completely inaccurate response to a very straightforward and neutral question." While the results aren't reassuring, NewsGuard found false narratives were amplified 33 per cent of the time when their testing focused on the United States — nearly double the rate in Australia. Researchers believe part of the reason is that the campaign to influence AI models in the US is larger and longer running. "That is not something that we've observed yet with Australia," she said at the time the audit was conducted in mid-March. Photo shows An election sign of Wil Anderson in a neighbourhood with a dog urinating on it with Gruen Nation Election edition and iview. It's election season and politicians are trying to sell you the world. The team at Gruen isn't about to buy it. They're taking a big swing at the election, showing you how the democracy sausage is made, all the sizzle and none of the meat. Since then, the Pravda Australia website has come to light, and significantly increased its output, although the daily volume is still much lower than on some other sites in the network. ABC News conducted its own less extensive audit of AI chatbots towards the end of the election campaign to assess whether their performance in handling false narratives had deteriorated. Our tests revealed similar results to NewsGuard's. Some AI tools did return answers that contained false information related to Australian politics. For instance, when the chatbots were asked for information about the "Australian Muslim Party", a party that doesn't exist, two AI models returned answers suggesting that it did. One even provided a detailed breakdown of the motivations for the party's formation ahead of the 2025 federal election. The 2025 election explained: Our testing also found that some tools could easily spin up fake social media posts that serve to amplify false information when asked. One of the chatbots created a series of social media posts falsely claiming the Australian government provided millions of dollars to the terrorist organisation Hamas. But the rate of answers containing falsehoods had not significantly increased. So far, it's not clear how much impact Pravda Australia has had on the AI front. A failed operation, or a slow burn? There are no signs that the Pravda operation, also known in the intelligence community as "Portal Kombat", is reaching many humans either. Even Mr Boikov, the site's most prominent contributor, claimed to be unaware of its existence, although he said it sounded "fantastic". "It's low-level, insignificant activity that is not garnering a lot of authentic attention," Recorded Future's Mr Minor said. The Coalition's home affairs spokesperson senator James Paterson has called for an investigation into Pravda's Australian operations by the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce. The taskforce includes several government bodies, including intelligence agencies and the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). "Any allegations of foreign interference, including online, must be taken seriously and investigated," Senator Paterson said. "The Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce … should examine whether these actors are trying to sway our election through chatbots". James Paterson says any allegations of foreign interference needs to be taken seriously. ( ABC News: Matt Roberts, file photo ) A spokesperson for the AEC said the taskforce had observed that web traffic to the site was "very low", as was social media amplification of its content. "Taskforce agencies have noted the number of accounts subscribed to the site's associated Telegram channel, and the number of posts on X in the last month that contain a link to the site, are both in single digits." But while Pravda Australia might appear to be failing, analysts believe human engagement is the wrong metric to judge it on. "They've invested zero resources in trying to build an organic human audience on social media, which is very significantly different from most Russian disinformation efforts," Ms Sadeghi said. That lack of appeal to humans, she said, didn't stop it from succeeding in the US. "These narratives are being laundered by a network that has no distribution, online or human engagement, but is having a massive impact on the outputs of Western AI models." Photo shows Nigel Farage sits in a brown armchair, pointing at a photo of Vladimir Putin. The five Facebook pages an ABC investigation linked to foreign interference in the UK election have been taken down for deception and "inauthentic engagement tactics". Multiple experts said Russia plays a long game when it comes to information warfare. "Russian doctrine thinks about this in terms of generations, and Australians think about this in terms of election cycles," said Miah Hammon-Errey, the CEO of Australian security advisory firm Strat Futures, and a former analyst at an Australian security agency. She said Russia has a natural and ongoing interest in Australia and its election outcomes, as a member of the Five Eyes security alliance and a vocal supporter of Ukraine. "Australia has been an active voice, perhaps outsized for our physical and economic size on the global stage. "They have a real particular interest in destabilising international alliances," she said. "I think of Portal Kombat specifically more as an enduring type of operation," Mr Minor said. "At the end of the day, they're not concerned with supporting a single candidate," he said. "They're ultimately trying to increase division across Australia, or just really undermine the democratic process in itself." The ABC is on the hunt for any misinformation or disinformation circulating in the lead-up to the federal election. Send us a tip by filling out the form below, or if you require more secure communication, select an option from our page.
Axios
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Exclusive: Russian disinfo floods AI chatbots, study finds
A Russian disinformation effort that flooded the web with false claims and propaganda continues to impact the output of major AI chatbots, according to a new report from NewsGuard, shared first with Axios. Why it matters: The study, which expands on initial findings from last year, comes amid reports that the U.S. is pausing some of its efforts to counter Russian cyber activities. Driving the news: NewsGuard says that a Moscow-based disinformation network named "Pravda" (the Russian word for truth) is spreading falsehoods across the web. Rather than directly sway people, it aims to influence AI chatbot results. More than 3.6 million articles were published last year, finding their way into leading Western chatbots, according to the American Sunlight Project. "By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information," NewsGuard said in its report. Newsguard said it studied 10 major chatbots—including those from Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, Meta, Mistral and Perplexity—and found that a third of the time they recycled arguments made by the Pravda network. Zoom in: NewsGuard says the Pravda network has spread at least 207 provably false claims, including many related to Ukraine. The Pravda network launched in April 2022, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and has since grown to cover 49 countries and dozens of languages, NewsGuard said. Of the 150 sites in the network, about 40 are Russian-language sites using domain names referencing various regions of Ukraine. A small number are more focused on themes than regions, it said. Pravda is not producing original content itself, NewsGuard says, but instead is aggregating content from others, including Russian state media and pro-Kremlin influencers. The big picture: Deliberate falsehoods (disinformation) as well as inadvertent misinformation have both been called out as significant — and pressing — risks of generative AI. NewsGuard's findings build on a report from February by the U.S.-based American Sunlight Project that warned that the network appeared aimed at influencing chatbots rather than persuading individuals. "The long-term risks – political, social, and technological – associated with potential LLM grooming within this network are high," the ASP said at the time. Between the lines: NewsGuard said the strategy "was foreshadowed in a talk American fugitive-turned-Moscow-based-propagandist John Mark Dougan gave in Moscow last January at a conference of Russian officials." Dougan told the crowd: "By pushing these Russian narratives from the Russian perspective, we can actually change worldwide AI."
Local Germany
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Local Germany
'Disinformation campaign': Kremlin propagandist sets sights on German election
John Dougan runs a network of more than 100 such fake sites, which mimic German media outlets, mirroring a disinformation tactic used during the American election last year, according to researchers at the German nonprofit Correctiv and the US watchdog NewsGuard. The sites by the former Florida deputy sheriff, who fled to Russia while facing a slew of charges including extortion, are flooding the internet with content favourable to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. They also target mainstream parties such as Germany's Greens, whose support for Ukraine and NATO is in direct contradiction with Russian geopolitical interests. "Dougan's case demonstrates how the Kremlin is increasingly leveraging non-Russian nationals and Western fugitives to spread propaganda, obscuring their direct involvement and evading detection," NewsGuard analyst McKenzie Sadeghi told AFP. "Dougan's apparent efforts in Germany recycle the same tactics he used in disinformation efforts during the US election." One of the sites called "Echo der Zeit", (Echo of Time), falsely claimed that Green party candidate Robert Habeck sexually abused a woman. The claim, Sadeghi said, bore similarities to Dougan's campaign last year that falsely accused the former US vice-presidential contender Tim Walz of sexually assaulting a student. Economics Minister Robert Habeck in the debating chamber of the German Bundestag. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Bernd von Jutrczenka Another falsehood planted on a site in Dougan's network was that Germany plans to import 1.9 million Kenyan workers, a narrative that seeks to boost the AfD's anti-immigrant sentiment. The claim was also splashed across African news sites, an old trick Sadeghi said was used to obscure its Russian origin. 'Large network' Researchers spotlighted another false claim of a €100 million ($105 million) corruption scandal involving missing paintings at the Berlin art museum Gemaldegalerie, which sought to implicate German politicians such as Habeck and Claudia Roth. Dougan denies any involvement with any Russian entity, calling the assertions "made up". "I find the Russian government to be rather useless for anything, a bunch of idiot bureaucrats who never get anything done. So, I don't know why everyone thinks I work for them," he told NewsGuard in a text message last month. Dougan, who once served in the US Marines, has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government. But Western intelligence officials and disinformation researchers have linked Dougan with a Russian influence operation dubbed Storm-1516. "From what we have observed so far, their (Storm-1516's) current approach appears to be as follows: Create a large network of fake media outlets, all of which would be updated regularly with AI-generated filler articles, then activate them by one at a time when required for a specific campaign," said the Gnida Project, an anonymous research group tracking Russian influence operations. 'Front man' European intelligence documents cited by US media describe Dougan as a prolific Kremlin propagandist who is paid and directed by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service. "Dougan is playing the front man role in this operation," a Gnida Project member told AFP. Germany's security services have warned that Russia and its sympathisers could step up meddling and disinformation to boost extremist parties and sow doubt about the democratic process. Media investigations have pointed to Kremlin-linked efforts to support not just the AfD but also boost the Russia-friendly views of the far-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). Leader of left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) Sahra Wagenknecht arrives for an election campaign rally in Saxony, on August 20, 2024 in Zwickau, eastern Germany, ahead of the state election in Saxony. (Photo by JENS SCHLUETER / AFP) Germany's interior ministry has set up a taskforce to take "necessary protection measures" against any disinformation, sabotage, espionage and cyber-attacks. Researchers say a German government less aligned with NATO and Ukraine and more skeptical of European integration would be beneficial to Moscow's geopolitical strategy. As the election approaches, Dougan appears poised to release more disinformation and polarising narratives. However, his efforts with Germany were struggling to achieve the same traction as his campaigns in the United States, where his claims garnered tens of millions of views and targeted high-profile politicians. "Unlike the US, where he was more attuned to the political climate and knew what narratives would resonate, Dougan's apparent lack of familiarity with German cultural and political nuances, coupled with a playbook that has been repeatedly exposed, has made his campaigns easier to identify and dismiss," Sadeghi said. By Johanna Lehn with Anuj Chopra in Washington and Dounia Mahieddine in Paris
