‘Anonymous’ Warwick sites share the same IP address, Warwick Advertiser confirms

Multiple politically-charged, anonymously managed websites covering Warwick link back to Brian Torpie, who is running for Warwick Village Trustee.

Torpie, a software developer, told Warwick Advertiser that he has set up websites for over eighty properties. He said that he set up and helped the individuals behind WarwickParentChoice.org and Warwick2021.com “as a favor” but has nothing to do with the content on the sites. He said neither he, nor his companies, received any compensation for the work.

Torpie owns J.Geeks, a software company, and through his own website BrianTorpie.com, offers digital solutions such as webpages for a multitude of clients, including Middletown Medical and Leo Kaytes Ford.

J.Geeks manages text message marketing for Leo Kaytes. Ahead of the November 2, 2021 election, a handful of Leo Kaytes clients received a text message linking to warwick2021.com, a site with the headline: “Are radical leftists trying to take over Warwick?”

The text message came from the same phone number that Leo Kaytes had sent texts from through Torpie’s company.

At the time, Warwick2021.com shared the same IP address as BrianTorpie.com, Torpie’s webpage that hosts his portfolio. The Warwick2021.com IP address was subsequently changed after J.Geeks was contacted by Warwick Advertiser in November.

Warwick2021.com and BrianTorpie.com also share the same Google Analytics tracking ID, an identifier unique to the Google Analytics account for those sites. A common IP address shared across multiple sites does not necessarily mean the same one person is managing all of the sites. Google Analytics tracking IDs, however, are unique to the Google account managing a website.

More recently, an anti-mask protest at multiple Warwick schools on February 16, was orchestrated by an entity only identified as “Warwick Parent Choice.” WarwickParentChoice.org, which links to the online petition that was signed over 400 times, shares the same IP address as BrianTorpie.com.

Another website, WarwickWatch.org, which identifies itself as “anonymous truth-tellers” and a “group of citizen-journalists who aim to pull the curtain back on all manner of local issues,” has the same IP address that Warwick2021.com now has, after it was changed in November.

Torpie told The Warwick Advertiser that he is not familiar with WarwickWatch.org, and that neither he nor his companies were involved with setting it up.

J.Geeks told the Warwick Advertiser in November that they had no idea who sent the warwick2021.com text, stating that multiple different companies could hire Twilio, which is the company J.Geeks uses for Leo Kaytes’ text software.

Pete Pinto contributed to the reporting of this story.