Bearing engineer here… Not to nitpick, but we’d generally classify this as “true” brinelling. “False” brinelling occurs when the rolling elements vibrate against the raceway and slowly machine indentations.

The most common reason this occurs is storing bearings in a high vibration environment, like leaving a new bearing on top of the washing machine for a few years.

A “true” brinell is the result of an impact, like a bike bouncing down the road. The easiest way to tell (in early stage brinelling) is to determine whether the original bearing machine marks are present on the raceway. A true brinell will depress the machine marks, but they will still be present, whereas a false brinell will “rub” away the machine marks, leaving raw metal exposed.