Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ShowPonies/Archive

Suspected sockpuppets
The sockmaster seems to be an account dedicated to editing the article Max Sharam. The master has made 295 edits on Wikipedia, 287 of which were to that page.

The IPv6 editor appears to genuinely be the master or someone acting in concert with them. In this series of edits, the master makes two edits removing information that were one minute apart, then the IP makes two edits a whopping minute later to remove Sharam's name, and then the master proceeds to make a flurry of edits that remove information from the article. Some of the information removed by the IP and the master was the same, and the IP admitted on the master's talk page to have been "instructed by" Sharam to make edits to the page.

The first sock, MermaxLLC, lines up pretty well with the editing patterns of the IP and the first editor. I will also note that there exists a company called Mermax LLC that is based out of Manhattan and that the IPv6 itself geolocates as a static New York City IP address. The officer on the board of that company is "L Sharam", which matches the legal name of the article subject that was listed in the article. Just like the master account did, MermaxLLC systematically removed information from the article that included the name and year of birth of the public figure (compare these edits from the master to these edits from the sock. The final sock appears to be related to this sock, as they have the stage name of the article subject as their username and are making the same sorts of removals as the Mermax LLC account was.

It appears that we've got a case of admitted UPE here, with socking to boot. With respect to the MermaxLLC and MaxSharam accounts, I can't 100% rule out an impostor, but it's clear that all of these accounts appear connected in some way. I'm requesting checkuser to more firmly establish a technical connection, as well as to check for sleepers. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 23:01, 7 April 2023 (UTC)


 * CC:, who appears to have been involved in reverting the UPE over the past couple of years. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 23:01, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments by other users

 * Accused parties may also comment/discuss in this section below. See Defending yourself against claims.

Clerk, CheckUser, and/or patrolling admin comments

 * - I'd suggest soft-blocking MaxSharam as a well-known username. ShowPonies has a COI with Max, as explained in the talk page. I have asked ShowPonies about the nature of the COI, since it seems it's paid and requires a disclosure. MarioGom (talk) 08:32, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * . Please, do not action this yet. MarioGom (talk) 08:52, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Per VRT, there is no impersonation here. I withdraw my request for a well-known person block. I don't think this is abusive sockpuppetry (COI, yes), but the subject of an article with concerns about a legitimate WP:BLP issue. I don't think we should aggravate the problem from SPI. The content issue should be followed up at . . MarioGom (talk) 09:09, 8 April 2023 (UTC)