According to a recent account by reporter Adrian Chen in The New York Times, the Internet Research Agency may be behind several larger hoaxes throughout the United States. The first engineered a fake chemical spill in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana, through a coordinated social media campaign and text message alerts. This “airborne toxic event” of sorts had media coverage and eyewitness testimony. None of it, investigators soon realized, was real.

Months later, many of the same accounts used to spread the news of the fictional chemical spill reported an Ebola outbreak in Atlanta. Others told of a shooting of an unarmed black woman, again in Atlanta.

At first glance, none of these three events appeared to be related, although two videos—the first one documented the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) apparent involvement in the chemical spill and the other the shooting of the unarmed woman—appeared to have the same narrator.

Chen’s account should be read in full, not summarized. Nevertheless, it does raise a few important questions. For one, are these hoaxes the new face of the 21st century information war? It would appear so, if only in for the short term.