The 19-year-old DOGE staffer known as “Big Balls” online, whose grandfather was a KGB spy, reportedly ran tech support for a cybercrime ring before taking his job in Washington.
Big Balls’ real name is Edward Coristine and, according to Reuters, he ran a company called DiamondCDN in 2022 while he was still in high school. DiamondCDN’s website is now defunct, but the Internet Archive has a copy. The service purported to protect clients from Distributed Denial of Service attacks and claimed to have a “near instant reaction” when such attacks happened.
Wired and Krebs on Security had previously reported on Coristine’s connection to DiamondCDN, but Reuters has more details. One of DiamondCDN’s clients was a cybercrime ring called EGodly. On Telegram, EGodly bragged about cryptocurrency theft, hijacking phone numbers, and doxxing an FBI agent. It even made prank phone calls to the FBI agent and posted audio of it on Telegram.
In another post on Telegram, EGodly thanked Coristine’s DiamondCDN for its services. “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,” EGodly said in a post on Telegram, according to Reuters.
Coristine had previously been linked to “The Com” by Krebs on Security. The Com is a nebulous label for a disorganized and decentralized digital youth criminal movement that organizes on Discord and Telegram. The Com isn’t one specific group, it’s more of a cultural movement.
Reuters did not explicitly link EGodly and DiamondCDN to The Com, but the activities described match previous reporting about how they operate. EGodly allegedly posted a video shot from inside a car of someone driving by the FBI agent’s house while screaming “EGodly says you’re a bitch” out of the window. In the world of The Com, participants tend to commit digital crimes and then brag about them in Discord and Telegram groups. Doxxing enemies and making obscene phone calls are common.
Krebs on Security and Wired have both written about DiamondCDN and its connection to the online criminal underground before. When Coristine was 16, he founded a company called Tesla.Sexy LLC which controls dozens of web domains, including some that are registered in Russia. The links between Coristine and known criminal gangs are numerous and complicated. The Reuters story just details the latest one.
Com-related violence isn’t limited to verbal and digital harassment. 404 Media has reported about how members of The Com film themselves attacking the homes of rivals. Sometimes it’s as simple as throwing a brick through a window, but other times they’ve shot at buildings with handguns.
To be clear, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine has not been accused of street violence. But he does have a lot of connections with the culture, communities, and companies who participate in digital crime and commit street violence.
Elon Musk defended Coristine in a post on X last month. “Big Balls is awesome 😎,” he said.
