On May 18, German social media influencer Mirko Drotschmann was sitting on his couch when a strange email popped into his inbox.

It was from an advertising company called Fazze, offering him compensation to disparage U.S. COVID-19 vaccines.

“They wanted me to tell my subscribers that there are many deaths connected to the Pfizer vaccine. And they offered me money for that.”

Offered the opportunity to name his own price, he got suspicious: “All the information they sent me was wrong.”

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It was also strange, Drotschmann said, that “I couldn’t find a physical building for that company. When I did some research, I found out that this agency had a connection to a bigger agency in Russia, called ADNow.”

The most unusual element about this company, for Drotschmann, was that he could find no evidence of any ad campaigns that they’d done in the past.

He decided to expose them, but first he launched his own ruse.

On Aug. 4, Samantha Williams, who lives in the D.C. area, got a text message from a relative who lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

It contained an image of a flyer.

“I was shocked how well presented and articulated the information on the flyer appeared,” Williams said.

This well-crafted flyer was a big problem. “The information on the flyer was technically true but I thought it inflated the risk of the vaccine,” Williams said.

The messaging on the flyer, Williams said, “was compelling, and I thought it could effectively persuade any Black person that was not inclined to get the COVID-19 vaccine and [could] perhaps question vaccination in general.”

It’s not clear whether there is any direct connection between that flyer and the information Fazze and ADnow used to recruit influencers, but there are basic similarities: Both focused on amplifying negative developments related to the vaccines or outright lies.