Florida Democracy Staff

Various media outlets are reporting that 2012 GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, padded his Twitter numbers with fake accounts.

The website Gawker.com first reported the allegations, citing a source identified only as “a former staffer” and contending as many as 80 percent of the accounts are false.

Gingrich had touted a Twitter account with more than 1.3 million users, Mashable reports.

The source told Gawker that Gingrich has hired “follow agencies” to create false Twitter accounts to boost perceptions of his online popularity.

“If you simply scroll through his list of followers, you’ll see that most of them have odd user names and no profile photos, which has to do with the fact that they were mass generated,” Gawker quotes the anonymous former staffer as saying.

Tags | gingrich, republicans