"Team Jorge" might as well not exist. This phantom company has no website, no switchboard and no accessible contact details. In order to avail of its services, you must either approach one of the showcase companies that gravitate around it, or be put in touch with someone close to "Jorge", the elusive chief mercenary who presents himself only under a pseudonym. This secrecy is explained by the nature of the services Team Jorge provides: à la carte smear campaigns and disinformation, ranging from hacking e-mail boxes to spreading rumors through fake news sites and creating armies of fake profiles on social networks.
The #StoryKillers project – coordinated by the organization Forbidden Stories in collaboration with a number of media organizations, including Le Monde – lifts the veil on the inner workings of Jorge's business model. As part of this investigation, journalists from Radio France and the Israeli news organizations Haaretz and TheMarker posed as intermediaries for potential clients in order to arrange several meetings with teams and partners of Team Jorge. The company's capabilities were highly praised during these meetings.
For several months, 20 different media outlets, including Le Monde, worked with the Forbidden Stories consortium to investigate companies that specialize in the manipulation of public opinion and the dissemination of fake news. Within the framework of this project called #StoryKillers, three journalists from the consortium posed as intermediaries for a potential French client in order to set up meetings with operatives selling "turnkey" influence tools.
This investigation revealed the existence of "Team Jorge", an extremely discreet Israeli company that claims to have interfered in dozens of elections around the world. It offers its clients an arsenal of illegal services, from hacking into e-mail accounts and private messaging systems to the massive dissemination of influence campaigns thanks to a gigantic network of fake accounts on social networks.
Their representatives boasted of having worked on more than 30 presidential elections around the world, mostly in Africa, and detailed some of their operations, both on behalf of states and private operators. "We have been working in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America," said Mashy Meidan, an Israeli partner in the organization, described by Jorge as "having run some of the most successful [campaigns] in history." Reached for comment, Meidan said through his lawyer that he had never heard the name "Team Jorge" before.
Blackmail against opponents
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