In brief: Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team contains a member who once provided tech support to a cybercrime gang, according to a new report. Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old often known by his nickname of “Big Balls,” already has a colorful history, with other reports claiming he is the grandson of a KGB spy.
According to records reviewed by Reuters, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN that provided network services from around 2022, while he was still in high school. Among its users was a website run by a ring of cybercriminals operating under the name “EGodly.”
EGodly thanked DiamondCDN for providing it with DDoS protection and caching systems in February 2023, noting that Coristine’s company helped it securely host and safeguard its website, dataleak.fun.
Personally, I voted for Big Balls https://t.co/gtRPzGHLDr
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025
That same year, EGodly boasted on its Telegram channel that it had hijacked phone numbers, broke into law enforcement email accounts in Latin America, and committed cryptocurrency theft. It had also distributed personal details of an FBI agent who was investigating the group, including his phone number and photographs of his house, on Telegram.
The now-retired FBI agent told Reuters that the group was being investigated over its connection to swatting incidents. “These are bad folks,” the former agent said. “They’re not a pleasant group.”
A cybersecurity researcher said EGodly was made up of hardened fraudsters.
Nitin Natarajan, who served as the deputy director of CISA under former President Joe Biden, told Reuters that it was concerning someone who had provided services to cybercriminals now had access to sensitive government networks.
Coristine set up Tesla.Sexy LLC in 2021, when he was 16 years old. The company controls dozens of web domains, including at least two Russian-registered domains, one of which is an AI bot for Discord servers targeting the Russian market, writes Wired.
According to journalist Jacob Silverman, Coristine’s great-grandfather worked for the KGB during the Cold War. Valery Fedorovich Martynov was recruited by the FBI in 1982 to pass Soviet intelligence to the US, but he was eventually discovered by KGB counterintelligence officer Victor Cherkashin and executed as a traitor.
Coristine was fired from a cybersecurity internship last year for allegedly leaking insider information to a rival. He was also accused of frequently engaging with Telegram and Discord communities linked to cybercrime.
Coristine’s background has led to some questioning the vetting process for DOGE staff, and whether any background checks were carried out.
