(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The hacker who compromised a server in the FBI’s New York City field office and accessed files about sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein in the process in 2023 is a foreign cybercriminal, according to Reuters.
Headline USA was the first English-speaking outlet to report on the hacker accessing the “Epstein files” in 2023 on the day of the Super Bowl—an incident that resulted in roughly 100 terabytes of data being lost forever.
Reuters added additional details Wednesday.
“The intrusion was carried out by a foreign hacker who did not appear to realize they had penetrated a law enforcement server. The hacker expressed disgust at the presence of child abuse images on the device and left a message threatening to turn its owner over to the FBI,” Reuters reported, citing an anonymous source.
“Bureau officials defused the situation by convincing the hacker that they actually were the FBI, in part by having the hacker join a video chat where they flashed their law enforcement credentials in front of a web camera.”
Reuters added that it’s still unclear who the hacker was, what country they were operating from, what they did with the material accessed, or whether any effort was made to identify or punish them for breaking into the FBI’s server. The FBI told Reuters that the hack is still under investigation.
As previously reported by Headline USA, the hack’s connection to the Epstein files is detailed in a draft of a September 2024 sworn declaration from FBI agent Aaron Spivack, who was under an internal bureau investigation for being responsible for the February 2023 computer intrusion. The record was reported on by a French publication and was posted on Reddit, but was otherwise unpublicized until this outlet reported on it on Feb. 27.
🚨NEW(ish)🚨
An explosive FBI record in the Epstein Files shows that the bureau's NYC office was hacked in 2023, and that hackers gained access to Epstein records.
Worse still, some 100TB of data was lost as a result.STORY BELOW🧵 pic.twitter.com/CsH1FuhV1b
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) February 27, 2026
According to Agent Spivack’s declaration, the 2023 FBI computer hack stems from the bureau enabling remote internet access to the C-20 computer lab. The FBI’s C-20 squad is a group in the New York office that investigates child sex crimes by.
Agent Spivack said that 500 terabytes of data went missing as a result of the intrusion. He said he was able to recover about 400 terabytes.
“I was told to Google how to recover the data,” he remarked in his declaration. “No one else tried to help us.”
Spivak said his team wasn’t able to identify the computer that hacked them—“but it had to have accessed our network either by being plugged into the network, or possibly by telnetting in virtually,” he added.
Rumors of missing or destroyed Epstein evidence have persisted ever since it was revealed that Epstein had removed computers from his Palm Beach home before police searched it in October 2005.
Last February, author Michael Shellenberger reported that FBI employees were destroying evidence on severs. Shellenberger’s source was FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle, who in turn heard the rumor from another agent inside the bureau.
Most recently, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., made similar comments on CNN last month.
“We had someone come forward and say there was destruction of evidence under the former deputy director of the FBI,” Luna said.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
