# John Dougan (conspiracy theorist)

John Mark Dougan, also known as BadVolf, is a former American police officer who became a hacker, conspiracy theorist and propagandist for the Russian government. He was a deputy sheriff of Palm Beach County and defected to Russia in 2017, where he received asylum and placed himself at the service of the Kremlin. He is said to have built up a network of disinformation sites to influence western politics.

## Biography

According to his own website, Dougan enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1996 and served for four years. After leaving the Marines, he worked as a horse trader and founded a database design company before becoming a police officer, serving as deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County, Florida. Dougan later claimed to have witnessed corruption and criminal involvement within the Sheriff's Department. He left the department in 2008 after reporting colleagues for violence and corruption. He was permanently dismissed in 2009 after sexual harassment allegations were made against Dougan within the police force.
Following his dismissal, Dougan began an internal vendetta against the Sheriff's Department and the FBI, which he described as corrupt. He lured West Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw into a trap, and Bradshaw admitted to him that he did not always follow the law, using a voice changer to pretend to be a woman. He also created a website called PBSOTalks, where Dougan and others anonymously post complaints and sensitive information about local officials in Florida, resulting in the leak of numerous home addresses of police officers, judges and other officials. In 2013, Dougan first traveled to Russia, where he met with Pavel Borodin, a close confidant of Vladimir Putin, after being lured to Russia by a woman. Dougan was already under surveillance by US authorities at the time.
After his visit to Russia, Dougan began to go by the alias BadVolf (БадВолф), a cover identity as a Russian hacker under which he published illegally tapped telephone calls and other sensitive data on the internet. In 2016, the FBI opened an investigation into Dougan and his house was searched by the police. Dougan eventually fled to Russia via Canada, where he was granted asylum and portrayed himself as a victim of a corrupt justice system in the U.S. In 2018, he was charged in Palm Beach County with illegal wiretapping and extortion. Dougan was granted Russian citizenship and, as a defector, was given carefully staged propaganda appearances on the state-run Russia Today TV network.
While living in Russia, Dougan has made a number of claims. In 2019, he told media that he had compromising material (including sex tapes of famous people) that he claimed came from Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested by the Palm Beach Police in 2006. Police Chief Joseph Recarey (who died unexpectedly shortly afterward) is said to have handed these over to Dougan, who copied them and later brought them to Russia. He claims to have been behind the cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee in July 2016, which resulted in numerous internal emails from the Democrats being published on WikiLeaks. Outside sources have not verified this claim.
In Russia, Dougan is said to have worked with the military intelligence agency GRU and propagandist Aleksandr Dugin to influence elections in Europe and the United States. He was reportedly involved in the distribution of deepfakes and AI-generated videos to damage Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election. In 2024, he was assigned over 150 websites that spread pro-Kremlin propaganda, conspiracy theories and disinformation. These were disguised as local news and often contained AI-generated content. He also created over 100 German-language AI-generated websites in order to influence the 2025 German federal election.