Following misrepresentations by a white nationalist leader and coordinated efforts by internet trolls, numerous researchers and media outlets spread a seemingly false claim that the man charged with killing more than a dozen people at a Florida high school belonged to an extremist group.

Law enforcement agencies say they have no evidence so far to support this claim, and the rumor appears to have been perpetrated by white nationalist trolls themselves.


On Thursday afternoon, the Anti-Defamation League reported that a white supremacist group claimed ties with Nikolas Cruz, who confessed to the shooting spree that killed at least 17 people, including many high-school students, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

“A spokesperson for the white supremacist group Republic of Florida (ROF) told the Anti-Defamation League on Thursday, February 15, that Nikolas Cruz [....] was associated with his group,” the ADL reported. The ADL quoted a man named Jordan Jereb, who runs the small group, which is based in Tallahassee.

“Jereb added that ROF had not ordered or wanted Cruz to do anything like the school shooting,” the ADL wrote in a blog post that was quickly picked up by ABC News and The Associated Press, and later percolated through dozens of other media outlets. Even The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, picked up the claim.

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Some outlets reported they had their own conversations with Jereb or classmates of Cruz who allegedly corroborated the association of Cruz with ROF.


But a few hours later, after law enforcement agencies said they had no evidence linking Cruz to ROF, Jereb said his identification of Cruz was a “misunderstanding” and that he, too, had been the subject of a “prank.” On online forums and Twitter, trolls and white nationalists gloated at the disinformation they had sowed.

“All of our evidence seems to point to the ADL getting this wrong,” said Joan Donovan, a researcher who tracks online misinformation campaigns for Data & Society, a think tank in New York City.

The ADL subsequently revised its report, as did many news outlets.

"ADL shared information from our experts on extremism and claims from white supremacist that we believed could be helpful to both law enforcement and the public due to the fluid and evolving nature of the events," an ADL spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. "Confirmation of whether Cruz was part of ROF is now in the hands of law enforcement, and that’s what the Broward sheriff’s team is looking into."


At a news conference on Thursday, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters that such a connection was “not confirmed at this time,” but that law enforcement was continuing to investigate. The sheriff's office in Leon County, which contains Tallahassee, later told the Tallahassee Democrat that it had found "no known ties between the ROF, Jordan Jereb or the Broward shooter.”

Donovan called this an instance of “source hacking,” a tactic by which fringe groups coordinate to feed false information to authoritative sources such as ADL researchers. These experts, in turn, disseminate the information to reporters, and it reaches thousands of readers before it can be debunked.

“It’s a very effective way of getting duped,” Donovan said.

The ADL traced its original tip to posts on 4chan, where researchers found “self-described ROF members” claiming that Cruz was a brother-in-arms. But many of those posts seem to have been written specifically to deceive reporters and researchers.

On Wednesday, an anonymous 4chan user posted about receiving a message on Instagram from an ABC News reporter after making a joke suggesting he knew Cruz.

“Prime trolling opportunity,” another user replied.

“You have to take advantage of this,” a third chimed in.

He asked for proof of the reporter’s identity, according to posted screenshots from their correspondence. The reporter provided an official email address and sent a photo of an ABC identification badge.


Some on the 4chan thread joked about sending back obscene photos, but others gave concrete tips for tricking the reporter: “Keep talking to her so she gains your trust”; “Keep this going be realistic ... say you have known him for years you met him on a Liberal Facebook page years ago and you have kept in touch”; “Say you are scared to tell her in case you get blamed, it will get her excited you know something big.”

This particular 4chan user seems to have sent the reporter a racist cartoon and was quickly blocked. Many on the forum ripped into him for missing a “a golden opportunity.”

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“You could have told her the shooter took ‘an unusual interest in islam lately,’” one user wrote.

But the trolls now had a shared objective: disseminate disinformation about Cruz. It’s unclear when exactly they settled on a narrative that included Jereb and ROF.

In posts to a neo-Nazi Web forum called The Right Stuff, a user called “Jordan Fash” said the idea originated in a group chat on Discord, an app for gamers that is popular with white nationalists and the alt-right. ("Fash" is common internet shorthand for "fascist.")

According to Jordan Fash, an ABC News reporter reached out to one of the group’s members on Instagram. The group passed around her number and told her Cruz was associated with Jereb. Group members communicated with at least two ABC News reporters in a coordinated effort.

Their correspondence was not posted online in its entirety. In some of the posted exchanges, the reporters asked trolls to substantiate their stories.

"Not to suggest that you aren't being truthful, but it would be very helpful if you could let me know how you know that," one of the ABC News reporters wrote to one person via Instagram, according to screenshots posted to 4chan on Thursday.


“It was common knowledge he did rallies with ROF, I frequently saw him conversing with Jordan Jereb in person,” the person, whom the reporter addressed as "Ethan," responded. Jordan Fash posted some of the same screenshots to The Right Stuff.

“I was there. These are screen caps taken from when this shirt started. 99% of it was done on the phone,” Jordan Fash wrote.

In posts to Gab, a social-networking site used by many in the alt-right, early Friday morning, one user said the Discord group “spent around 18 hours orchestrating, contacting ABC, being interviewed by reporters, etc.”

Members swapped links to articles that identified Cruz as a member of ROF, celebrating each story and keeping a tally of media interview attempts.

"ABC messaged me. Asked to use my name in this article," wrote one user.

"This is spreading like wildfire," wrote another user, "Renegade," after someone in the chat shared a link to the ADL blog post.

"All it takes is a single article," the first user wrote back. “And everyone else picks up the story.”

ABC News reported that its reporters spoke with three “former schoolmates” of Cruz, but did not indicate whether these communications were over social media. A spokesperson for ABC News declined to comment on how its reporters vetted the identities of these purported acquaintances.


For its part, an AP spokesperson said, “AP spoke with the leader of Republic of Florida, who said Cruz was a member of his group and had participated in exercises in Tallahassee. In the course of continued reporting, police and other groups were not able to confirm Cruz’s association with the white nationalist militia, and that is what is reflected on the wire.”

Others in the Discord chat said they were contacted by a reporter from The New York Times.

At some point, the trolls started a “confessional” 4chan thread dedicated to convincing readers that Cruz had been a member of ROF. The ADL confirmed this 4chan post was the one that led to their blog post.

"After seeing that 4chan post, we called Jereb and he told us what he told us," said an ADL spokesperson.

“I've kept quiet for long enough,” reads the first anonymous message on the 4chan thread. “I've decided that its time the world know the truth about ROF.”

“Nikolas Cruz was a revolutionary member of the Republic of Florida, who preached twisted and dark things like terrorism and attacking innocent people.”

The anonymous user claimed to be a former ROF member and posted a photo titled “Me and nick.jpg,” which depicted two men posing with the ROF flag.

Another posted a blurry photo of ROF members that was seemingly taken from a blog dedicated to countering extremism in Tallahassee.


On the Discord chat, a user called Curbstomp suggested sharing generic photos of ROF and claiming they depicted Cruz.

"I have an idea. ... We can just take a pic of masked ROF members and claim one of them is Cruz," Curbstomp wrote.

Members of the Discord chat swapped potential photos.

Others joined the chorus on 4chan, interspersing jokes with purported confirmations.

"I can confirm this guy was trying to enact a race war and got kicked out of ROF,” wrote another poster.

It’s unclear how directly involved Jereb was in the deception effort. Jordan Fash wrote on The Right Stuff that Jereb sometimes “hangs around” in their Discord chats.

The posted screenshots show a Discord user called “The Floridian” who seems to claim membership in ROF and who recounts calls with the ADL and reporters.

"Its funny the ADL guy said 'I just want to warn you your group is going to be under scrutiny,'" The Floridian wrote.


"Also ABC called back they are having trouble verifying Nikolas envolvement," The Floridian also wrote. ABC News reported speaking with Jereb directly, as did the AP, The Daily Beast, and other outlets.

“ROF now has a higher kill ratio than Atomwaffen," The Floridian laughed in recounting the calls, referring to a small neo-Nazi group in Florida that is reportedly linked to several murders.

The Floridian also claimed to have been contacted by “the feds.”

"I told the feds I have nothing to do with Cruz," The Floridian wrote. "I told them it was a prank and that I was also confused."

Jereb later seemed to deflect responsibility, calling it all a “legit misunderstanding” because ROF has multiple people named Nicholas.

“You realize I wasn't in on the prank? You realize I thought the information I was being given was legit?” he wrote on Gab, suggesting that his fellow white nationalists owed him an apology.

Jereb did not respond to a phone message or an email.

As the story spread even further, one Discord user posted a tweet from the AP: "BREAKING: Leader of white nationalist group has confirmed suspect in Florida school shooting was member of his organization." It had been retweeted more than 35,000 times at that point.


The group crowed at such a quantifiable achievement.

"Those 35 thousand people aren't going to change their minds," wrote one member, mocking those who would read the press coverage he and his friends concocted.

"They're lemmings. ... They will go to the grave convinced that the shooter was a white nationalist."

By Thursday evening, 4chan users were celebrating their efforts, posting screenshots of their communications with reporters and faux posts pretending to be ROF members.

“[T]hey are so hungry for a story that they'll just believe anything as long as its corroborated by a few people and seems legit,” wrote the creator of one 4chan thread.

Donovan, the disinformation researcher, said reporters need to be more vigilant against these kinds of campaigns, which are going to get only more common and more sophisticated.

“We have to start thinking of these white nationalist groups as what some of them describe themselves — ‘media militias,’” said Donovan. “They think of media as adversarial territory.”

