The Phisher King

Exposing the perpetrator of the infamous People Count USA phishing scam.

Note: Before diving into today’s unavoidably long but eventful post, I strongly encourage both new and returning readers to revisit my December 2024 piece titled "Gone Phishing" and its January 2025 follow-up "Over the Target (and Under the Bus).” You'll need this foundation/refresher to fully appreciate what follows.

Oh, and because I’m not completely sadistic, I made you an executive summary:

• A John Doe lawsuit and Mailchimp subpoena have definitively identified the perpetrator behind the People Count USA surveillance operation that deceived Coral Gables residents for nearly two years.

• Technical evidence proves a sitting city commissioner created fake identities and organizations to secretly track residents' political opinions on matters pending before the commission.

• Mailchimp records reveal the perpetrator used a traceable email address that redirects to their own company website, providing ironclad proof of their involvement.

• The commissioner lied on the record during official proceedings when directly asked about People Count USA, claiming they weren't "even sure what it is."

• As a sitting commissioner conducting official business, all survey data and communications are public records that have been deliberately destroyed and/or withheld in violation of Florida law.

• The perpetrator faces potential criminal prosecution for fraudulent misrepresentation, public records violations, and official misconduct—with some charges rising to felony level.

• The evidence demands immediate resignation or removal from office, as the conduct represents a fundamental betrayal of public trust that disqualifies the perpetrator from continued service.

---

Months ago, I published a series of posts exposing a string of deceptive emails featuring political surveys on local issues. These emails, sent to over 17,000 registered voters in Coral Gables, used undisclosed tracking technology to secretly link survey responses to individual recipients' identities. To make matters worse, the scam involved an even deeper layer of deception. The entity claiming to conduct the surveys, "People Count USA," didn’t actually exist. In short, residents were being surveilled without their knowledge, deceived about the origin and purpose of the surveys they were being urged to take, and manipulated by someone hiding behind fake identities and a fictitious organization.

Depending on who was behind it, this was a potential multi-layered violation of law in the form of a nearly two-year episode of carefully calculated fraud that may implicate, among other things, federal and state anti-phishing statutes, state and local ethics rules governing elected officials, and state public records law. Some of these violations (again, depending on the identity of the perpetrator) could rise to the level of criminal conduct, including the withholding of public records related to official misconduct, which is a felony under Florida law.

At the time, I had my suspicions as to who was behind this scam, but lacked definitive proof. The circumstantial evidence was persuasive to say the least, but, alas, suspicion and proof are different standards entirely.

That changes today. After months of meticulous grassroots investigation, a determined and resourceful resident delivered the goods with an extraordinary legal strategy straight out of a John Grisham novel: a John Doe lawsuit filed for the sole purpose of subpoenaing records from Mailchimp to unmask the true operator of People Count USA. Thanks to account records produced by Mailchimp, we now possess conclusive proof identifying the person behind the surveillance campaign targeting Coral Gables voters.

Pull up a chair, folks, this one's a meal.

The crime

I won't waste precious word count on rehashing all the minute details from my original post, but a quick refresher will help frame what follows.

Between August 2023 and December 2024, Coral Gables residents received multiple emails from an organization calling itself People Count USA. These emails contained personalized greetings using residents' legal names and urged recipients to click a link to take political surveys. To my knowledge, there were three surveys conducted by this entity, two of which, at least, focused heavily on specific items pending before the commission:

• August 2023: Focused on moving municipal elections to November, an issue the commission had just taken up.

• January 2024: Targeted the then-pending Little Gables annexation question.

• December 2024: Addressed the upcoming municipal elections.

What’s more, each survey was a classic, if absurdly heavy handed, "push poll,” i.e. advocacy disguised as neutral information-gathering:

But the most alarming feature was the survey link itself, which employed undisclosed tracking technology that permanently tied each resident's identity to their survey responses:

To be clear, no reputable polling organization would be caught dead conducting surveys so clearly designed to eschew anonymity. Doing so would, at a minimum, violate a number of ethical principles and industry best practices while potentially triggering regulatory violations that would instantly destroy organizational credibility. Surreptitiously tracking participant responses and linking them to real identities represents a massive violation of privacy that creates the potential for targeted retaliation.

But discovering that this phishing operation was the handiwork of some cut-rate pollster or political consultant would actually be the least troubling outcome here. The severity of this fraud operates on a spectrum that escalates from bad to catastrophic depending on the perpetrator's identity. If the culprit were a political committee like, say, Gables First or the CGNA, we'd be looking at obvious campaign finance disclosure violations on top of everything else. Worse still would be a candidate for public office or their campaign apparatus engaging in this surveillance.

But the most damaging possibility of all? The catastrophic scenario? A sitting elected official orchestrating this scheme. Because when a commissioner surveys constituents on matters pending before the commission while hiding behind fake identities, then attempts to withhold or destroy records linking him to this activity, an entirely new universe of ethical, fiduciary, and legal violations comes into play. The unresolved question, of course, has been which scenario we were dealing with.

The discovery

Unsurprisingly, "Gone Phishing" was a popular post. Once readers understood the scope of the deception, how their responses were being secretly tracked, how the organization behind the emails was entirely fictitious, there was widespread and understandable outrage. The community wanted answers.

But, of course, none came. Whoever was behind the phishing operation clearly had no intention of coming clean. And despite heaps of circumstantial evidence that seemed to point toward Ariel, including the use of Mailchimp, the chosen aliases, the name of the fake organization, and the distinctly Ariel-esque aesthetics of the email campaign, there was no conclusive proof identifying any particular culprit.

Hence the extraordinary effort that followed. Not long after I published my initial posts on the subject, an enterprising and extremely pissed-off resident contacted Mailchimp hoping to obtain user information for the People Count USA account. This resident reasoned that because the account holder had clearly violated Mailchimp's user agreement and possibly federal and state electronic communications laws, Mailchimp might be willing to hand over the user's basic account information to avoid being ensnared in potential litigation. Unfortunately, but somewhat predictably, Mailchimp ignored this request.

Undeterred, the resident embarked on extensive legal research and discovered a little-known but powerful tool: the John Doe lawsuit. This type of litigation allows plaintiffs to initiate legal proceedings against unknown and unnamed parties and is specifically designed for situations where an offender's identity remains concealed and discovery is needed to unmask them.

Remarkably, and with the kind of industriousness that would have made KFC downright deadly had they possessed even a fraction of it themselves, the resident filed such a lawsuit for the express purpose of compelling Mailchimp to provide user data through a subpoena. After the suit was filed and Mailchimp was served, the company initially resisted disclosure. But once the plaintiff's attorneys educated Mailchimp's counsel about the fraud perpetrated using their platform, the company performed an about-face and agreed to provide the requested information.

After six weeks of waiting, Mailchimp provided all available information with a crucial disclaimer: their internal investigation had revealed not one but two People Count USA accounts, one of which had been closed by the user. Moreover, the user had employed the same fictitious names to create both accounts and had deliberately used Mailchimp's free tier, presumably to avoid providing credit card or payment information that could be personally identifying. In other words, whoever created these accounts had gone to great lengths to avoid linking them back to their real identity. What Mailchimp ultimately provided were two meager Excel files containing what appeared to be no useful information whatsoever. It seemed the resident had hit an expensive dead end.

That’s where I come in. The demoralized resident shared the information with me, and at first, I too concluded there were no useful fingerprints in the data. All the names and email addresses appeared to be fabricated. The data did include a user IP address, but IPs generally lack the precision needed to identify one’s exact location. Nevertheless, the IP address associated with both People Count USA accounts put the user somewhere in the North Gables, with several search tools placing the user somewhere near the 8th street border, mere blocks away from the home of a certain elected official:

Still, this wasn’t exactly actionable intelligence. It seemed as though whoever was behind People Count USA sufficiently covered their tracks. They certainly went out of their way to do so.

But then something caught my eye. One specific email address. One, unlike the rest, that didn't use the phony People Count USA domain. Importantly, this appeared to be the user's actual contact email used during account registration, one that needed to function in order to confirm and activate the account. That email was miami@americanaresearch.com, which for some reason had a very familiar ring to it.

It was familiar not because I had seen it before, but because it employed the "American" descriptor that I knew a certain someone liked to use in their branding—presumably because it conveyed a large, national, and significant air. Kind of like the "USA" in PeopleCountUSA, or the "American" in American Strategies. So maybe we had something to work with after all.

The evidence

Here’s a cleaned up and condensed rendering of the Excel files produced by Mailchimp:

Note the fields indicating the user opened the account on August 20, 2023, under the alias "Jorge Dominguez." Google that name and you'll find the top hit is a scandal-plagued Cuban-American scholar who happens to be a Belen Jesuit alumnus, just like one of our city commissioners. A narcissist’s crimes must always bear a signature.

More importantly, note the americanaresearch.com email address in the "contact" field, which differs from the People Count USA emails elsewhere. As most know, opening an online account on virtually any platform requires a working email address to activate the account. Since the People Count USA domain was purchased the same day this Mailchimp account was opened, the user likely didn't have time to set up a working email under that domain and had to use an existing address to receive the activation link.

But as they say, hasty climbers have sudden falls. Using this email was the perpetrator's fatal mistake, as it provided an unmistakable link back to the user. Simply typing americanaresearch.com into any address bar triggers this revealing redirect:

So, like People Count USA, "American Research" is a fake entity. But it redirects to something that is, at least comparatively, less illusory. A website for a company called “Marketseur.”

So what is a redirect?

Think of it as a digital forwarding address that proves common ownership. When you type americanaresearch.com into your browser, it doesn't take you to American Research because that company doesn't exist. Instead, it automatically forwards you to marketseur.com. This deliberate configuration requires administrative control over both domains.

And why is this redirect important?

The redirect from americanaresearch.com to marketseur.com provides incontrovertible evidence that both domains are operated by the same entity. Both domains share identical server infrastructure, including the same IP address, nameservers, and SSL certificate. Most conclusively, americanaresearch.com is configured with a permanent HTTP 301 redirect that automatically forwards all visitors to marketseur.com. This level of technical integration requires administrative control over both domains and their hosting configuration. It cannot occur by coincidence, accident, or third-party manipulation. Here is the technical analysis for those interested:

Okay, so now the $64,000 question. Who owns Marketseur?

Well, with a name that bad, who do you think?

Iyay oldtay ouyay osay.

By the way, the last screenshot of Ariel's LinkedIn page was taken weeks ago. More recently, I checked the page again and noticed that the Marketseur entry had been conveniently scrubbed from his work history. Looks like someone might have suspected he'd been compromised, but true to form, forgot to remove the damning reference from his bio at the top of the page.

Anyway, Ariel doesn't just own Marketseur, he is Marketseur. It's one of umpteen brands that Ariel concocted for the sake of entrepreneurial cosplay, as it doesn’t seem to have any offices, employees, or recent clients for that matter. By all appearances, it's simply Ariel operating from his basement through yet another in-name-only business.

So let's take a moment to absorb what we have here. A sitting city commissioner orchestrated a nearly two-year surveillance operation against his own constituents using fabricated identities, fictitious organizations, and deceptive email headers to disguise his involvement. He deployed hidden tracking technology to secretly monitor and shape residents' political opinions on matters pending before the very commission where he sits and votes. He crafted manipulative push polls designed to attack his colleagues while masquerading as legitimate research. When the scheme was exposed and residents expressed outrage at being surveilled and deceived, he remained silent, allowing the community to demand answers he had no intention of providing. All the while, he continued to present himself as the champion of transparency and resident rights, voting on the very issues he had been secretly polling about, using data he had surreptitiously gathered from the people he was elected to serve.

The hole deepens

When an elected official engages with the public on city-related matters, that official is acting in their official capacity. Period.

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Lindke v. Freed (2024) eliminates any doubt about this principle. The Court held that public officials engage in state action and thus fall under public records requirements when they both possess actual authority to speak on government matters and purport to exercise that authority, regardless of whether they use personal platforms or resources. Ariel clearly possessed authority as a commissioner to communicate with constituents about pending city business, and by systematically polling voters on commission matters like municipal elections and annexation (with tracking technology to monitor their responses), he was unquestionably exercising that official authority. Under Lindke, Ariel cannot escape public records obligations by claiming his surveillance operation was somehow "personal" when he was gathering political intelligence on matters he would vote on as commissioner.

Remember, the August 2023 poll targeted the November elections issue, which the commission had just taken up. The January 2024 survey focused on Little Gables annexation, another matter under active commission consideration. When Ariel distributed his push-poll surveys to seemingly every registered voter in Coral Gables, he was acting as Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, not as a private citizen. It doesn't matter what resources he used or where he operated from.

Why is this important, beyond the obvious ethical implications? Because an elected official acting in their official capacity is subject to, among other things, Florida's public records laws. Therefore, everything related to those People Count USA survey, from the account records, to the survey templates, response data, and all associated communications, is a public record.

So let's look more closely at that, starting with the obvious. Potentially thousands of residents who took these surveys believed they were responding confidentially to a legitimate polling organization. They had no idea they were being deceived by their own city commissioner. And thanks to Ariel's astounding recklessness, all those survey responses that people assumed were private now belong in the public record. If you thought you were anonymously filling out a survey, guess again. If you believed no one would ever know that you "strongly agreed" with statements tantamount to "Vince Lago is a sleazy, corrupt, Miami-style politician," sorry to inform you, but that information is now something the public has every right to see, including the mayor himself. Let's hope he isn't as vindictive as KFC claims he is, amirite?

To further illustrate this point, recall how the city once considered conducting an online survey on Little Gables annexation but decided against it due to, get this, public record requirements. The city realized it could not simultaneously poll confirmed residents and maintain confidentiality, because poll responses would automatically become public record once the city conducted the survey. The same principle applies to any municipal agent or officer, including commissioners. Watch the following clip and take a shot every time you hear the term “public record:”

And to think, all this legal and ethical handwringing over public records requirements, only for Ariel to say ‘pfft, laws schmaws’ and conduct his own privacy-destroying poll on annexation just weeks later.

Amazingly, though, that isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is that because Ariel probably orchestrated this operation as a solo act, it’s likely that he alone controls access to these records. Every subsequent failure by members of the public to obtain these documents is the direct result of Ariel's obstruction—obstruction by a man who didn't just stonewall a valid public records request submitted to the city in May, but who brazenly lied to a resident's face, on the record and during an official proceeding, about his involvement in this scheme. Listen to Ariel tell Nicolas Cabrera that he's "not even sure what People Count USA is:"

Allow me to refresh your memory, Ariel. People Count USA is your idiotic brainchild. It’s the fictitious organization you manufactured as cover for your two-year surveillance and deception campaign against the very people who elected you. So why, exactly, are you lying through your teeth to the public, on the record, during an official proceeding?

Here is the aforementioned May 20, 2025 public records request that Ariel systematically stonewalled. And by stonewalled, I mean he deliberately ignored it for nearly a month (despite other commissioners responding promptly) before finally acknowledging the city clerk's repeated, increasingly urgent attempts to obtain a response. Ariel eventually replied with a brazen declaration that he possessed no responsive records whatsoever. No records, despite two years of operation, at least two Mailchimp accounts and at least one corresponding Alchemer account, and at least three published surveys. The only record the City could produce pursuant to the request below was a single copy of one People Count USA survey that Anderson had received along with the rest of us:

And here is the terse but unambiguous close-out reply (dated June 24) from the City after repeated attempts to locate additional records:

Your Gables Insider Felon

Politically, this is career-ending. Ariel has been caught red-handed running a shady surveillance operation against his own constituents. Every campaign promise about transparency, every sanctimonious lecture about serving residents first, every attack on his colleagues for alleged corruption now reads like the big fat lie it always was. The man who built his entire political brand on being "Your Gables Insider" has exposed himself as a fraud who spied on residents while brazenly lying to their faces about it. There's no coming back from this.

That said, the political ramifications are the least of Ariel's troubles. He faces serious violations of both state and county ethics rules. Florida's ethics code declares that public officers are "agents of the people" who must "observe, in their official acts, the highest standards of ethics." Ariel committed a flagrant breach of the public trust when he systematically deceived constituents about his identity while gathering their political opinions on official city business. These wrongdoings completely annihilate the credibility of a supposed public servant who built his entire political brand on transparency and ethical governance.

But the most damaging possibility for Ariel lies in the criminal implications of his conduct. Beyond the obvious ethical violations, Ariel faces potential prosecution for fraudulent misrepresentation under Florida law. He made false statements concerning material facts by representing himself as "People Count USA," a legitimate polling organization, when he was actually a sitting commissioner conducting surveillance. He clearly knew these representations were false since he created the fake organization himself, and he intended residents to rely on these misrepresentations by taking his surveys. Residents were harmed by unknowingly surrendering their privacy and political opinions to their own commissioner under false pretenses.

Equally severe is Ariel's flagrant violation of Florida's public records laws. Intentionally withholding or deleting public records is a serious offense, and when done in conjunction with official misconduct, which the phishing scam most certainly is, it rises to the level of a third degree felony. Under Florida Statute 119.10(1)(a), knowingly violating public records law is a first-degree misdemeanor, but the systematic destruction of the Mailchimp accounts and Ariel's false denial of possessing responsive records transforms this into something far more serious.

Here’s the key, when a public official destroys evidence of their own misconduct, as Ariel did by deleting the very email marketing accounts used to conduct his surveillance operation, Florida courts have consistently treated this as obstruction rising to official misconduct under F.S. 838.022. The deceptive polling scheme itself constitutes malfeasance in office, as Ariel’s using his official position to deceive constituents while gathering intelligence on matters he would vote on represents a corrupt abuse of public trust. The subsequent and determined cover-up demonstrates the "corrupt intent" required for felony prosecution by destroying records, lying to residents during official proceedings, and stonewalling public records requests.

Bear in mind that under Section 4-7 of the Coral Gables City Charter, conviction of any felony while in office results in automatic forfeiture of the commissioner's seat. No political process required.

Ariel's conduct represents a deliberate pattern of criminal behavior designed to conceal official wrongdoing. The wrongdoing was both fully understood and premeditated, as evidenced by Ariel painstakingly covering his tracks to avoid any traceable connection to the Mailchimp accounts. It's mens rea if ever it existed.

Resignation or Removal?

Let’s retrace Ariel’s nearly two-year campaign of calculated deception, step by step. He began by creating Mailchimp accounts under fictitious identities like “Jorge Dominguez,” violating the platform’s terms of service as part of a larger plan to mislead the public. He then crafted deceptive email headers using fake organizational names and aliases. This conduct aligns with the definition of a scheme to defraud under Florida Statute 817.034, which targets ongoing efforts to obtain something of value (such as political intelligence) through false pretenses. Ariel embedded undisclosed tracking technology in survey links to secretly monitor recipients without their knowledge or consent. While the legal status of this tactic is somewhat murky, it may implicate Florida’s Security of Communications Act (F.S. 934) depending on how the data was captured and used.

While serving as a sitting commissioner, he circulated push polls disguised as neutral research on issues that were actively before the commission. He deliberately concealed his role in creating and distributing these polls, which constitutes official misconduct under F.S. 838.022, a statute that prohibits public officials from corruptly misusing their office through deceit. When questioned about People Count USA during an official meeting, he falsely claimed he wasn’t “even sure what it is.” Although not perjury, this was a clear lie delivered in a public forum, undermining public trust and strongly suggesting a guilty conscience.

He later obstructed legitimate public records requests in violation of F.S. 119.10, falsely denying possession of documents he knew existed. Finally, he deleted what was presumably his most incriminating Mailchimp account, thereby destroying public records that were generated in the course of his official misconduct. This act could elevate his violation to a third-degree felony under F.S. 838.022, and may also constitute evidence tampering under F.S. 918.13 if done in anticipation of an investigation. Altogether, these actions form a clear and, frankly, astonishing pattern of fraud, surveillance, obstruction, and cover-up that goes well beyond unethical behavior and ventures into criminal territory.

Notably, I haven't even addressed the credible accusations from at least two residents that Kirk's campaign operatives visited their homes armed with information about how those residents had responded to Ariel's surveys and directly confronted them about their answers. You know you’re up the creek when potential election fraud has to be triaged out of the analysis of your fraudulent conduct.

Of course, we should be honest about the massive double standard we’re about to witness. If Lago had been caught running a covert surveillance operation against residents while lying about it on the record, team KFC would have organized a second recall effort faster than Dr. Castro’s Maserati can go from 0 to 60. There would be emergency town halls, breathless blog posts, Miami Herald exposés, and Mrs. Cruzchev firing up the Cricut machine for a limited-edition 'Lock Him Up' t-shirt. But watch, the same people who spent months hyperventilating over baseless and, quite frankly, embarrassingly outlandish criminal allegations leveled at Lago are all but guaranteed to maintain strict radio silence now that their god emperor has been caught committing actual crimes against the very people who elected him.

But in the final analysis, this is one scandal that should transcend tribal affiliations. Ariel brazenly betrayed the sacred trust placed in him by voters and then obstructed justice to cover his tracks. He didn’t commit blunders. He didn’t make mistakes. He perpetrated crimes. Resignation, therefore, is strictly imperative.

Ariel, you have forfeited any claim to represent the residents of Coral Gables. Your surveillance scheme violated every principle of democratic governance and public trust. Your subsequent lies and obstruction constitute criminal conduct that demands accountability. It’s time for you to go.

If you lack the decency to step down voluntarily, then the people you defrauded must remove you through every legal means available. Because the alternative, allowing a proven liar and lawbreaker to remain in office, would signal that in Coral Gables, corruption is acceptable so long as it benefits the right crowd.

The choice is yours, Commissioner. Resign with whatever dignity you have left, or risk being removed as the fraud you've proven yourself to be.