I found political ads on Facebook in the days before the 2018 election aimed at Democrats… urging them to vote for Green Party candidates in a variety of Rust Belt state races. All we knew about the group is that Facebook said the ads were “Paid for by America Progress Now”…

Trick was… “America Progress Now” is not a corporation or a commitee registered with the FEC. I teamed up with a VICE reporter (who had verified in person that no one at their supposed address had heard of the group) to report out this mystery. While America Progress Now used the images of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with the Democratic Socialists of America’s rose motif, those groups hadn’t heard of it. Nor had the Green Party. We didn’t solve the mystery, but we did expose that this group didn’t appear to be who they said they were… and that Facebook’s disclosure policy was of no help.