Fake Online Personas Created to Sway Public Opinion on Controversial Dallas Tower

An expose has uncovered the 'cloak-and-dagger tactics' being utilized in a $1 million campaign to defend Dallas's Museum Tower luxury condo building from claims that glare from its glass skin is a nuisance to the Nasher Sculpture Center.

July 31, 2013, 6am PDT | Jonathan Nettler | @nettsj

"According to his Facebook page, Brandon Eley is from the Bronx, studied at Brooklyn College and now lives in Dallas."

"But Eley isn’t real."

"His fake Facebook profile is part of a more than $1 million legal and public relations campaign waged by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System in its battle with the Nasher Sculpture Center over Museum Tower," report Steve Thompson and Gary Jacobson, who outline how a former television anchorman worked on behalf of the pension system (the building's owners) to manipulate public opinion about the tower's harmful glare through online comments.

"A housecleaning is in order at the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System, the tower’s tax-supported owner, starting with administrator Richard Tettamant and anyone complicit in the counterfeit Internet campaign," argues a subsequent editorial in The Dallas Morning News. "If the pension board wishes to salvage its reputation, and if it wants to broker a settlement with the Nasher over reflected glare from the condo tower, it needs a change at the top."

Full Story:

Fake social media profiles part of Dallas pension fund’s public relations fight with Nasher

Published on Saturday, July 27, 2013 in The Dallas Morning News