This story was copublished in partnership with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
“Make cats safe again” read the MAGA-style baseball caps perched on the heads of five AI-generated felines printed on a black T-shirt alongside a Trump 2024 banner. It’s yours for just $29.99 (10 percent off if you order three) from United Patriot, an online store that proclaims it is “not afraid to speak the truth!”
The T-shirt may seem innocuous enough. But its slogan references a racist lie, spread by US presidential candidate Donald Trump, that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had been eating local pets. The false claims have led to a wave of xenophobic abuse including bomb threats and vandalism against the local Haitian community.
The item is also one of thousands being sold by a group of online operators who are targeting the US election using hate, lies, and conspiracy theories, all to make a quick buck.
United Patriot is one of four ecommerce companies identified by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) that have been advertising merchandise, often aimed at Trump supporters, using different levels of misinformation and hate speech.
They have collectively paid to publish over 15,000 “political” ads that have racked up millions of impressions on Facebook. And though the operations present themselves as patriotic outlets selling US products, TBIJ has found evidence suggesting many are being at least partly run from overseas.
Both operations are just examples of a bigger global problem that goes far beyond one election in one country.
“Evidence has shown that we engage more with content that is provocative and emotionally charged,” says Hannah Perry, digital policy head of research at think tank Demos. “Because algorithms on platforms such as Facebook are designed to optimize for engagement—keeping us on platforms for longer and prolonging our exposure to advertising—such algorithms disproportionately surface inflammatory and divisive content.
“Actors will no doubt target the US election to attract an outsized audience relative to other domestic stories.”
The operations we identified are all enabled by the economics of the internet, which encourage workers from Nigeria to the Philippines to the US to amplify hate and falsehoods to millions in the pursuit of profit. And they show how people simply out to make money currently have their sights set on one of the most finely balanced elections in history.
From Biden to Betting Scams
“A White House video in which Joe Biden goes 45 seconds without blinking is raising serious questions about who is currently serving as president of the United States,” says a presenter over a picture of the current president, claiming he has been dead since June 2022.
The video, produced by The People’s Voice channel on the video platform Rumble, is clearly aimed at capturing conspiracy-minded Americans. It is just one of hundreds of US-focused posts hosted on a network of Facebook pages run largely from Nigeria aimed at extracting money for sports betting scams. Twenty-five of the most active pages identified by TBIJ have amassed more than 669,000 followers, more than doubling from 290,000 followers last year.
An investigation by Nigerian media outlet HumAngle reported in September that the wider network, which may be as large as 240 Facebook pages, appears to scam people out of money by offering them the opportunity to profit from high-odd bets placed on what the pages say are “fixed” sports matches. Despite HumAngle’s reporting, 199 of the accounts remained active with a combined following of more than 2.7 million accounts.
To attract users to these scams, the pages have been boosting engagement by publishing political content—in particular, conspiracy theories and false claims about the US presidential race. Some posts falsely claimed Kamala Harris, the sitting US vice president and 2024 Democratic nominee, is a man. Others focused on the idea that natural disasters such as Hurricanes Helene and Milton were engineered by Democratic leaders to prevent people from voting in swing states. Both are conspiracy theories that have gained traction in the last few months.
The pages have co-opted the branding of hacktivist movement Anonymous, an ostensibly anti-establishment group of online activists and hackers that rose to prominence in the early 2000s. Wearing masks similar to those adopted by the movement (originally taken from the film and comic book series V for Vendetta), those behind the scams will often overlay footage of themselves over clips pushing disinformation.
But while they align themselves with a political movement and push political falsehoods, they are using them to make money.
Daniel Roberts, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, tells TBIJ: “Scammers persistently target people online and in the real world—and that’s why we work with governments, NGOs, and law enforcement agencies to deter bad actors. This is a highly adversarial space, and we continue to update our enforcement systems to respond to evolving scammer behavior. We are reviewing the accounts shared with us and will enforce against any that violate our policies.”
Promoting Popularity
Online marketing, whether it is promoting legitimate goods, hateful T-shirts, or attempts to scam people out of their money, relies on getting people to see posts. Social media algorithms tend to boost content that they predict will attract a lot of attention.
In recent years, it has become clear that conspiracy theories, misinformation, and hate are very good at tapping into the emotions that drive this kind of engagement. And that, in turn, means that anyone with something to sell is incentivized to push that kind of content to boost their profits. Post something that receives a high level of engagement (say, a conspiracy theory) and it’s more likely that your other content will be promoted by the algorithm.
Other posts on the Nigerian network’s pages claim to be able to foresee the future. Predictions about politics or natural disasters are published alongside their claims to deliver returns on high-risk bets. They also often post “testimonials”—short videos depicting people thanking the pages’ operators for “changing their lives” through fixed sports betting. All are gimmicks to lure in new targets for sports bettings scams.
According to a conversation with the admins of one of the pages, a ticket to participate in the fixed betting would cost someone $4,250. A “mini-ticket” costs $2,100. TBIJ obtained a bitcoin address used by one such page with about 70,000 followers and found that the wallet had facilitated nearly $1 million worth of transactions. These schemes have been used to scam many Nigerians and others over the years, according to HumAngle.
The target market, however, is far more global.
As the US election has gained pace, the volume of content on the network of sites aimed at US citizens has ramped up, with the pages trying to remain relevant by referencing new events.
Many posts piggyback on false claims about US government relief available to hurricane victims, such as the Trump campaign’s claims that relief funding was restricted because the money was instead going to immigrants or to the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression. “I hate that our government never runs out of money for illegals and foreign wars. But runs out of money to help struggling Americans,” one post reads.
Another shows an AI-generated picture of Trump standing in a flooded area and handing toilet paper to the victims, captioned, “a picture they don’t want you to see.”
Profiting off Patriotism
Like the Nigerian network, other similar ecommerce merch stores rely heavily on Facebook for their marketing and promote similar conspiracy theories in order to gain traction.
Many of the ads run by United Patriot include graphics that reference and promote destroying the pride flag, misogynistic slurs against Harris, transphobia, anti-vaccine logos, anti-Ukrainian sentiment, gun ownership, and mentions of the “stolen election.”
Misogyny aimed at Harris regularly featured in ads run by another of the sites, which also sells merchandise containing anti-trans slurs. Another of the sites posted a video falsely claiming Dominion voting machines helped steal the election from Trump.
The messages, potentially misleading US citizens or stoking hate towards various groups, will have been seen by many times more people than actually made a purchase.
Those running the network of Facebook pages in Nigeria may simply believe that US-focused clickbait is the best way to boost the number of people who see their scams. In contrast, the ecommerce operations identified by TBIJ give every impression that they are proudly American.
Yet analysis of their listed physical addresses and online presence suggests that the businesses are at least partly run from Vietnam, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and Croatia (with Facebook page admins based in those countries). None of the ecommerce sites identified by TBIJ provided a US address that could be tied to their business.
United Patriot, which says its “patriotic collection of amazing apparel items … are all printed locally here in America,” claims on its Facebook page and website to be located at an address in Gardena, California. However, TBIJ could not find proof of that business registered at the address. The only other commercial activity found at the address was a warehouse providing services for wholesale shipments for people based overseas, as well as two online stores that have been accused in Google reviews of being scams.
The Better Business Bureau, a nonprofit focused on “marketplace trust,” told United Patriots in November 2022 that it should change or substantiate claims made on its website about items “printed in the US.”
Another such site, Red First LLC, says it is based in Carrollton, Texas, at the same address as a fraudulent merchant claiming to resell Ralph Lauren clothing. This does not necessarily mean the companies are owned by the same person, but suggests the address may have been used by scammers.
Nor are all these operations strictly pushing right-wing messages. Red First LLC (which trafficks notably less in hate and misinformation than the other three companies) has created at least 5,000 ads over the last two years. While it promotes mostly right-wing merchandise and content, such as T-shirts bearing misogynistic insults toward Harris and signs suggesting the 2020 election was stolen, it has also in a small number of cases posted pro-Harris content. The commercial imperative behind the operation means it isn’t averse to backing the other side.
Meta Under Scrutiny
As attempts to influence public opinion and elections have ramped up across social media, companies such as Facebook owner Meta have come under scrutiny for the role they play in hosting bad actors trying to polarize public opinion on their platforms.
In 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, blew the whistle on the company’s role in spreading disinformation and the increase in racial hatred. Numerous studies have also shown that social media platforms’ algorithms, including Facebook’s, create bigger engagement opportunities for far-right, conspiratorial, and hateful content.
“The US election is an already fraught and divisive political event. If the aim of these scammers is to bring people in, then appealing directly to emotion to circumvent media criticality is key,” says Joe Ondrak, senior research and technology lead at anti-disinformation startup Logically.
“There is likely a large pool of potential victims and easily exploitable narratives for them to choose from. The way algorithms reward engagement means that misinformation, conspiracy theory, and hate speech are easy ways to find a wide audience.”
