There is no KBSF television station in San Francisco, and according to BBC verifies investigationThe original website that published the story was registered less than two weeks ago. A photo included with the article, which purported to show the accident itself, was actually taken in Guam in 2018. And the video of Brown — which the article and video incorrectly mention several times — also appears to be a deepfake. X-rays of Brown’s spine, supposedly taken after the accident, can be followed return to medical journals that have nothing to do with the alleged disaster.

Oddly enough, this isn’t the only recent instance of a wildly concocted story taking root against Democrats. The man behind the operation is John Mark Dougan, a former Florida police officer who has since moved to Moscow to work full-time on inventing fake news outlets to spread disinformation to American voters ahead of the 2024 election, according to BBC.

Another site Dougan launched, The Houston Post, accused the FBI of illegally wiretapping Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Other sites had similarly American names, including the Chicago Crier, the Boston Times and DC Weekly. According to the BBC, most of the articles posted on the sites were not necessarily fake, but rather poor copies of real news that had been reworked by AI engines. Some of the articles still included instructions for the bot at the bottom of the text, at the time of the BBC’s investigation: “Please rewrite this article taking a conservative stance.”