Over the past year, Bellingcat has continued to create and share new methods for open source investigations. While journalism can be a proprietary field, where scoops and sources are closely guarded, we believe partnerships and the sharing of methods leads to a more informed public. We also encourage our online community to take part in and contribute to our investigations.
Bellingcat’s Global Authentication Project is composed of volunteers who help track and report major stories. Our ongoing project documenting incidents of civilian harm in Ukraine is heavily influenced by GAP members who identify cases that Bellingcat staff verify before adding to our public-facing mapping project, a living document that preserves evidence.
We also have a public Discord server with more than 30,000 members, a lively space where our staff engage with users and seek to provide a platform for those who have exceptional findings. Importantly, very few people who come to us from either GAP or Discord are trained journalists.
For example, one talented member of our Discord contacted us last year with evidence linking a Google review page to a notorious cartel leader. The Google account contained posts and pictures that allowed Bellingcat to build a picture of the drug boss’ travels, activities and business dealings and uncover details about their associates. After one of these associates was arrested, we produced the third story in this series in January 2025.
Other impactful stories over the past year include our series into non-consensual deepfake pornographic websites. These stories have seen sites shut down or be refused custom by payment processors. We were also able to identify the owners/operators of some sites.
In 2024 Bellingcat revealed that 1xBet, one of the world’s most controversial bookmakers, live-streamed thousands of amateur sports games for gambling, raising questions about the due diligence employed by professional soccer clubs, like FC Barcelona, which have lucrative sponsorship deals with the bookmaker. Bellingcat and volunteers geolocated 16 secret venues across a number of countries. The joint investigation (with publishing partner Josimar) also revealed that gamblers could bet on matches in which children were competing. It published testimony from a former 1xBet amateur soccer player, who said people were recruited from local clubs, paid in cash to work shifts, and polygraph tested. Researchers also discovered that the “spokesman” for 1xBet – whose Russian founders are wanted for running an illegal gambling operation – used an alias and the professional headshot of a CNN journalist.
Our work tracking grain smuggling from occupied Ukraine also saw the US government sanction one of the vessels we identified, as well as its owners.
