Four prolific financial journalists are facing serious questions over whether they’re actually real. Welcome to digital media in 2026!

An investigation by The Press Gazette found that four allegedly human freelance journalists who’ve published articles shilling specific crypto coins — in outlets including Forbes, Investing.com, HuffPost, CoinTelegraph, VentureBeat, and The Street, no less — strongly appear to be fake. And each of them, tellingly, bear striking connections to a publicity firm called MarketAcross, which on its website describes itself as offering “PR for the world’s leading blockchain companies.”

Per Press Gazette, the four writers in question — their bylines identify them as Nikolai Kuznetsov, Reuben Jackson, Luis Aureliano, and Joe Liebkind — each boast headshots that are either likely-AI-generated pictures or easily-traceable stock photos. None of them have any clear online history beyond their collective financial publishing careers, which total more than 1,000 articles.

The human journalists at Press Gazette also found that each writer has frequently pushed readers to invest in cryptocurrencies hawked by MarketAcross clients, including a particularly dubious crypto effort dubbed “Gladius” that collapsed in 2017. And a defunct website for Kuznetsov, the most prolific writer among the seemingly phony cohort, was listed under the same address as a company called InboundJunction, a “media and PR group for tech, AI, and cyber brands” that has the same founders as — you guessed it! — MarketAcross.

None of the outlets where the allegedly faux financial writers have published content were able to provide Press Gazette with evidence that the freelance contributors were real. And none of the writers accused of being fake responded to Press Gazette‘s questions.

In sum, according to Press Gazette‘s reporting, it very much looks like crypto marketers have been operating made-up financial journalists like digital puppets, a scheme presumably designed to garner interest and legitimacy for their clients.

A managing partner for both MarketAcross and InboundJunction told Press Gazette in a lengthy statement that “we do not employ journalists, and our employees do not operate any of the profiles you referenced. We do not hold personal contact details for the individuals you mentioned and any activity associated with them appears to be years ago.”

Crypto is a realm uniquely wrought with scammery, and zooming out, the information world overall is a mess of fake slop right now. Before you make any consequential decisions, or choose to trust a particular writer or poster, you’d do well to be extra careful. Hopefully, the editors actually letting possibly-fake freelancers publishing this kind of content will start doing the same.

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