John Mark Dougan

John Mark Dougan, also known as BadVolf, (born 15 December 1976) is a former US Marine, and American police officer who became a pro-Russian hacker, conspiracy theorist and orchestrator of mass online disinformation campaigns, often using Artificial Intelligence, which have repeatedly been exposed, leading to international condemnation of both him and Russia.

Dougan has on multiple occasions either dressed as a woman, or disguised himself as a woman. Dougan has claimed he has 200 hours of video footage from Jeffrey Epstein, however as of 2026 he has not released this.

After leaving the Marines, Dougan worked as a horse trader and then founded a database design company before becoming a police officer, serving as deputy sheriff in Palm Beach County, Florida. Dougan worked at the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach from 2005 to 2008, in this time he faced 11 internal affairs investigations, and a jury awarded a fellow Palm Beach sheriff’s deputy a $275,000 settlement after it found that Dougan had pepper-sprayed and arrested the officer without cause.

Following his dismissal from the police, Dougan began a personal vendetta against the Sheriff's Department and the FBI, luring West Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw into a trap, Dougan using a voice changer to pretend to be a woman, with Bradshaw admitting that he did not always follow the law. In 2024 Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat exposed Dougan for having created a fake news website to make fabricated claims of sexual impropriety against pro-Russian British journalist Graham Phillips, with Higgins speculating this was likely a personal vendetta from Dougan.

In mid-2025 Dougan created over 100 German-language AI-generated websites to try to influence the 2025 German federal election, and was again exposed for doing so. Dougan was also linked with attempts to influence the 2025 Moldovan parliamentary election by orchestrating a disinformation campaign across social media, including circulating false claims such as pro-European Moldovan President Maia Sandu taking bribes, and (Sandu) having spent money to acquire sperm from Hollywood celebrities. When Dougan was confronted with allegations of his involvement in yet another disinformation campaign, he stated: “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Moldova? Where is that? I thought it was a fictitious country in one of those romance Hallmark movies…” In late 2025 Dougan was again exposed, this time linked to a scheme which cloned French news websites, attempting to make the fake sites look like the original.