Much like the man himself, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is never far from the news these days. After finding himself a cushy position alongside President Donald Trump as a 'special government employee', the world's richest man has been tasked with slashing $2 trillion from the government spend.
With Musk axing thousands of jobs, cutting whole departments, and sending out emails asking others to justify their jobs in bullet point form, the tech billionaire has irked millions. This has overflowed into his net worth taking a hit, Musk being sent death threats, and scenes of violence at Tesla dealerships.
There have already been questions about the young age of Musk's DOGE staffers and the fact they're being granted access to high levels of government security. In an embarrassing week that's already seen the US' war plans leaked via a Signal chat, a damning report from Reuters claims that one DOGE employee known as 'Big Balls' provided services to a gang that cyberstalked an FBI agent two years ago.
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19-year-old Edward Coristine is a prominent member of the DOGE team and has access to critical computers as part of his position trying to assist in trimming the governmental waste.
Musk himself has championed Coristine's work, previously saying, "Big Balls is awesome" on X. According to Reuters' investigation, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN, which provided network services to others. Among the DiamondCDN users was a group of cybercriminals that operated under "EGodly" between October 2022 and June 2023.
Attempting to access the EGodly website would apparently greet you with a DiamondCDN 'security check'.
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In February 2023, EGodly thanked DiamondCDN for its help and wrote: "We extend our gratitude to our valued partners DiamondCDN for generously providing us with their amazing DDoS protection and caching systems, which allow us to securely host and safeguard our website."
As well as EGodly boasting about committing cryptocurrency theft, the group is accused of hijacking emails and contact numbers for law enforcement across Latin America and Eastern Europe.
EGodly also distributed the phone number and photos of one FBI agent's home in early 2023, alongside a drive-by video of him being harassed outside his house.
The FBI agent is now retired but told Reuters that EGodly had drawn attention due its use of 'swatting'. Although he didn't go into further detail, he concluded: "These are bad folks. They're not a pleasant group."
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Coristine and the DOGE did not respond to Reuters' request for comment, while he's listed as a "senior adviser" at the State Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The CISA is responsible for protecting federal government networks from cybercriminals and foreign spies, but it didn't comment, and neither did the State Department.
It all comes in the aftermath of a Fox News interview where Musk hyped the work of the DOGE and said: "Basically almost no one has gotten fired, that’s what we’re saying."
In the aftermath of the report, 'Big Balls' started trending on X in the USA.
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One concerned citizen wrote: "This is why we need a full investigation into WHO is working for DOGE. Big Balls could never pass a background check, much less get a security clearance."
Another said: "Meanwhile, @elonmusk wants access to voter rolls & Social Security... what could go wrong? Oh. Maybe we shouldn't hand the keys over to someone who provided tech support to a criminal gang...."
A third called out the DOGE's entire mission statement and joked: "Not much has changed for Big Balls. He's still working for a crime ring."
Nitin Natarajan served as deputy director of CISA under Joe Biden and shared his concerns with Reuters: "This stuff was not in the distant past," he said. "The recency of the activity and the types of groups he was associated would definitely be concerning."
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Will Musk still think 'Big Balls' is as 'awesome' after all of this?