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https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2026/02/fact-check-doj-epstein-library-made-19yo-brazilian-into-9yo.html
Fact Check: DOJ Epstein Library's Formatting Glitch Turned Email About 'sexy and cute, 19y0' Brazilian Into 'sexy and cute, =9yo'
Feb 4, 2026 by: Dean Miller
Did the Department of Justice database correctly render the contents of a Jan. 17, 2013 email to Jeffrey Epstein when it turned the email's words into "New Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute, =9yo"? No, that's not true: The original email said "19yo". The = sign is one of several substitution errors that arise from optical character recognition scanning, PDF conversions and other automated processes the Department of Justice used to meet Congress' deadline for release of millions of pages of investigators' files on the late pedophile financier.
The claim that a 2013 email to Epstein referred to a nine-year-old was made in a Feb. 3, 2026 X post (archived here) on the @jakeshieldsajj account under the title "New Brazilian just arrived: sexy and cute 9-year-old ". It continued:
[...]
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/2018916279567241431.)
Researchers looking into the Epstein files have observed this glitch elsewhere in Epstein investigation documents.
When emails are exported or "flattened" into a PDF, there are encoding markers such as the equal sign that may remain in place of the character it was meant to modify, which would break numbers like "19" into "=9".
[...]
Feb 4, 2026 by: Dean Miller
Did the Department of Justice database correctly render the contents of a Jan. 17, 2013 email to Jeffrey Epstein when it turned the email's words into "New Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute, =9yo"? No, that's not true: The original email said "19yo". The = sign is one of several substitution errors that arise from optical character recognition scanning, PDF conversions and other automated processes the Department of Justice used to meet Congress' deadline for release of millions of pages of investigators' files on the late pedophile financier.
The claim that a 2013 email to Epstein referred to a nine-year-old was made in a Feb. 3, 2026 X post (archived here) on the @jakeshieldsajj account under the title "New Brazilian just arrived: sexy and cute 9-year-old ". It continued:
[...]
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/2018916279567241431.)
Researchers looking into the Epstein files have observed this glitch elsewhere in Epstein investigation documents.
When emails are exported or "flattened" into a PDF, there are encoding markers such as the equal sign that may remain in place of the character it was meant to modify, which would break numbers like "19" into "=9".
[...]
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