Romanian prosecutors are investigating a suspected ‘troll farm’ that used Turkish IP addresses and Russian email accounts to boost the online presence of far-right presidential candidate Călin Georgescu ahead of the 2024 elections, judicial sources told G4Media.

The investigation aims to determine the extent of the troll farm’s influence on the election campaign and whether foreign entities were involved in manipulating Romania’s political discourse.

According to the report, the troll farm used Russian email providers to create more than 20,000 TikTok accounts, which then generated over 2.1mn comments starting on November 23, 2024 — the day before the first round of voting. The comments aimed to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm to increase Georgescu’s visibility by repeatedly tagging his account.

The accounts were created using Russian email domains such as rambler.ru, with automatically generated addresses following a pattern, including examples like ushakov.5ow8e@rambler.ru and aleksandrov.27o0l@rambler.ru. The associated IP addresses were traced to major Turkish cities, including Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa, and Izmir.

The Prosecutor General’s Office sent a formal request to Turkish authorities on January 27, seeking cooperation in the investigation.

The online activity has been linked to UK-registered social media marketing company Social Freak Ltd, owned by Luke John Askew. The firm also operates NEXISITES and provides digital marketing services that allow payments via cryptocurrency, a method that can obscure the identity of clients.

Georgescu won the first round of the 2024 presidential election, which was later cancelled amid concerns over potential illegal campaign financing and foreign interference. The controversial politician was detained by police earlier this week and charged on six counts, including in connection to the financing of his presidential campaign and suspected extremist links.