Two Iranians Who Pretended to be Proud Boys Charged With Election Interference

The U.S. government has charged the two Iranian nationals accused of running a 2020 presidential election interference campaign that included hacking, disinformation, and threatening people to vote for Donald Trump.

24-year-old Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and 27-year-old Sajjad Kashian allegedly sent intimidating emails to tens of thousands of U.S. voters and threatened them to change their votes to Trump.

The emails were made to look like they were being sent from the Proud Boys, but it was completely bogus. And to make matters even worse, the duo also sent messages to Republican members of Congress and White House advisers claiming that the Democratic Party had a plan to exploit “serious security vulnerabilities” to register non-existent voters or change mail-in ballots, the indictment reads.

The Iranians were also working to hack into 11 state voter websites, the Daily Beast reported. In one case, they were successful and stole data on 100,000 voters.

The hackers also compromised an unnamed U.S. media company’s network and then attempted to break in the day after Election Day, with hopes of using the media company to spread disinformation on the election, the Department of Justice said.

Luckily, the FBI was able to stop them.

The U.S. government announced last year that the intimidation campaign was traced back to Iran.

The two indicted Iranians apparently worked for the company, Eeleyanet Gostar (now known as Emennet Pasargad), which has done business with the Iranian government.

The Treasury Department sanctioned

the hackers and the company, as well as four other company employees.