Fortnite developer Epic Games says the account some people believed to be linked to Jeffrey Epstein is a “ruse.” In a reply on X, the developer writes, “an existing Fortnite account owner changed their username” to “littlestjeff1,” an alias spotted in several emailed receipts from YouTube in the Epstein files.
The email suggests that “littlestjeff1” may have been connected to Epstein’s YouTube account, prompting online sleuths to search for the username on other platforms. Users later uncovered a “littlestjeff1” account on Fortnite, along with a 2019 email that mentions purchasing VBucks in Fortnite — though the sender and recipient are redacted. Online player databases showed that the “littlestjeff1” account has been active on Fortnite, fueling conspiracy theories that Epstein is still alive.
But Epic Games has since debunked these claims, saying that a Fortnite player changed their name “following the revelation of littlestjeff1 as a name on YouTube.” The company adds that the Fortnite trackers, where people uncovered the alias, “only display your current name, not any prior changes to it,” and that it has “no record” of Epstein’s email addresses mentioned in the files.
“Someone’s been having fun renaming their Fortnite account, but it’s recent and not connected to the email addresses in the archive,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says on X.