Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Montreux69/Archive

Report date May 11 2009, 09:30 (UTC)

 * Suspected sockpuppets:


 * Evidence submitted by CactusWriter

These SPA accounts' sole contributions (as well as that of User:A.o.strutt at Wikipedia Commons) are used to insert "Helen Anne Petrie" into Wikipedia article space. (for example, , ,). The problematic "Helen Anne Petrie" article goes back to at least a deletion in June 2007 as seen here, has consistently been deleted as a G12 Csd, and has most recently been deleted at Articles for deletion/Helen Anne Petrie as lacking credibility. The registered accounts User:Helen Anne Petrie and User:Helen anne petrie (1933-2006) (user names which violate WP:REAL) are blatant attempts to recreate the same article in user space. Note that User:The Strutt Family Trust has already been blocked as a sockpuppet. — Cactus Writer |   needles  09:30, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments by accused parties    See Defending yourself against claims.

I suspect that this may be a more serious matter than the usual mischievous sockpuppet trying to wreak havoc with Wikipedia or just doing it for amusement and the case should be dealt with very thoroughly. If there are ways to prevent it from happening again, they should be implemented. Drawn Some (talk) 14:41, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comments by other users


 * Clerk, patrolling admin and checkuser comments


 * Conclusions
 * All blocked and tagged. Tiptoety  talk 02:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Evidence submitted by CactusWriter
User:Montreux69 was banned as a sockmaster at Sockpuppet investigations/Montreux69/Archive for creating hoax additions about an artist named Helen Anne Petrie (revealed at Articles for deletion/Helen Anne Petrie). User:The Strutt Family Trust was one of the socks. This new group of users are SPA accounts who have created the probable hoax articles Strutt Family Trust, and a duplicate article The Strutt Family Trust(IT694/2002), which includes a reference to Helen Ann Petrie. They are socking the discussions at Articles for deletion/Strutt Family Trust. — Cactus Writer |   needles  20:54, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note that the IP account, which locates to the same country as claimed by a creator of the Helen Anne Petrie hoax, attempted to delete that entry yesterday. — Cactus Writer |   needles  22:10, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Comments by accused parties
See Defending yourself against claims.

Assessment by Bfigura
Concur with the assessment by CactusWriter. The sock pattern became apparent when articles starting being created for the various trustees. All were created by different users, but with identical content. I conferred with Accounting4Taste (discussion on his talk here), and while we were deciding how to respond, one of the trust pages was put up for deletion at this AfD. We decided to bring the socking evidence there for organizational purposes, and the socks started coming out of the woodwork. -- B figura (talk) 21:06, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I also concur with the assessment; the writing styles in talk pages are startlingly similar, the content is nearly identical, and the timing of these SPAs coming out of the woodwork is remarkably clear. Note also that one of the socks tried to remove content about sockpuppetry from the archived discussion. I think it's a logical conclusion that all these SPAs -- putatively in Italy, India and Africa -- share the same IP number and are further sockpuppets of the same individual who was the subject of the earlier investigation. I can't think of why this is taking place, because there doesn't seem to be any profit involved in what's been so strenuously asserted here, but doubtless there are things going on here that I can't appreciate. Accounting4Taste: talk 21:19, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

was blocked for 24 hours for disruptive editing/vandalism. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 22:12, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Comment by Beetstra
I blocked indef after they was vandalising one of the articles. --Dirk Beetstra T C 00:39, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Conclusions
All registered accounts indefinitely blocked and tagged. IP left alone as it probably has been reassigned by now. MuZemike 02:16, 31 October 2009 (UTC)