Famed Epstein reporter targeted in 'disturbing' hacking scheme: 'It gets worse'

Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, whose reporting on Jeffrey Epstein won a Pulitzer Prize and helped lead to the disgraced financier’s arrest in 2019, was the victim of an apparent hacking scheme, Brown revealed on Wednesday, and one that she questioned whether the social media platform X was “willfully” allowing.

“On Saturday, my X account was hacked. I know, a lot of people get hacked and thrown off X. But I was hacked in a way that should be alarming to those who run X, and to others still on that platform,” Brown wrote in a report published on her Substack Wednesday.

“I say this not just because the hackers disguised themselves as working for X, but because X is either inept on how to handle these hacks – or because they are willfully doing so, all too happy to silence journalists and others who try to expose the truth.”

Brown explained that she had received an email on Saturday that appeared to have been sent by X, alerting her of a potential violation of the platform’s policy on copyrighted material. The email included an option to appeal the supposed violation, which she followed through on. It was immediately after filing her appeal, Brown said, that she “received some disturbing follow-up emails.”

Brown claimed that she was immediately informed of a “suspicious” attempt to log into her X account, which itself was followed up by “another disturbing email” informing her that a new login credential had been added to her X account. She then received a third email informing her that another X account had been designated as a delegate to her primary account, which would permit the other X account to publish social media posts on their behalf.

Brown’s attempts to contact X support were unfruitful, she said, and the apparent hacking scheme appeared to be broader than she initially suspected.

“Despite our best efforts to remedy the issue, X continues to ghost me and the Miami Herald. Our phone calls aren’t answered. The email instructions don’t work. And yes, it gets worse,” Brown wrote.

“I discovered I had an old X account which I had not used since 2022. I started posting on that account in X in an effort to get someone’s attention. This morning I got another message from X saying that account had also been deactivated for violating X’s rules.”

After having inspected the initial emails she received “more carefully,” Brown concluded that they were likely "phishing emails,” or fraudulent emails designed to deceive people into revealing personal information or granting unauthorized access to online accounts.

While admitting that she “should have been more careful,” Brown didn’t mince words when criticizing X for their handling of the matter.

“Are they really this inept? They say they ‘investigated’ and they keep sending me instructions to change my password. Again, I can’t do this because they are not emailing me the code,” Brown wrote. “Elon Musk then bought Twitter, changed its name to X, and torpedoed some of the very checks and balances within that made the platform somewhat hospitable.”