Delco Publisher Doctored Racist Email For News Story: DA

MARPLE, PA — A Delaware County man who is the publisher for a Philly-based online news outlet based has been charged after allegedly creating a fake email from a county official that featured racist language, the Delaware County District Attorney's Office said.

Nikolaos Hatziefstathiou, 25, of Broomall, has been charged with three counts of felony tampering with public records, three counts of tampering with records or identification, forgery, two counts of identity theft, attempted theft by deception, theft of property lost, mislaid, or delivered by mistake, receiving stolen property, prohibited offensive weapons, and four counts of unsworn falsification to authorities, according to Delaware County District Attorney Katayoun Copeland.

Action News reported last week that Hatziefstathiou was being investigated for allegedly doctoring an email from an official in Delaware County Probation and Parole that contained racist language and running a story on the email in his outlet.

According to authorities, the "email" read as such:

Good morning, you don’t have to worry about job security … ROFL … so long as there’s a n---- in our county, you will have a full slate. Just make sure he registers as a (redacted) before applying, they’re extremely strict about that. Can’t have a bunch of gangbangs loving (redacted) in here … ha. (sic).

Hatziefstathiou, publisher of YC News, is accused of creating fake email accounts posing as Stephanie Wash, a Good Morning America producer, and Liam Stack, a New York Times reporter, sending emails to the DA's office repeatedly asking for any reports and a comment regarding a claimed "decade long scheme" involving several "Delaware County agencies," authorities said.

One of these emails stated the sender was trying to get "first comment" on a story that was going to be released by Hatziefstathiou, "Chief Content Officer at Original Media Group" in Philadelphia.

The DA's office then contacted Wash and Stack and both said they did not send or write the emails.

Between April 30, 2019 and May 28, 2019, investigators got several search warrants for the fake email accounts and found that the falsified emails were sent from an electronic device at Hatziefstathiou’s house in Broomall.

Through the investigation, authorities determined he used forged paperwork to get a PennDOT specialty plate identifying him as being employed full time by a news agency, the DA's office said.

On May 25, Hatziefstathiou posted the article with the purported racist email, claiming they got the email accidentally.

On June 5, a CID detective spoke with a supervisor at the Delaware County Adult Probation and Parole Office, who advised that Hatziefstathiou had been supervised by their office as a result of Hatziefstathiou’s arrest and conviction for several counts of false reports to law enforcement and harassment.

During Hatziefstathiou’s supervision, the probation supervisor would periodically email Hatziefstathiou’s attorneys and carbon copy Hatziefstathiou on these emails.

On June 24, authorities executed a search warrant at Hatziefstathiou’s Broomall home

Taken were numerous electronic devices of Hatziefstathiou's, a printed email from a Delaware County probation supervisor, and a stolen police-style Taser with two firing cartridges that was the property of a local Delaware County Police Department and was fired in June 2019.

The format of said email matched the format of the email featured in the article, but instead contained information in the body of the email related to Hatziefstathiou when he was on probation, the DA's office said.

The investigation into his electronic devices showed his Apple iPhone contained parts of the fake emails and that Hatziefstathiou's iPhone was used to create, send, and receive emails using the fraudulent accounts in the names of the legitimate Good Morning America producer and New York Times reporter, the DA's office said.

Investigators found the fake email on different devices seized from Hatziefstathiou. Located on his computer was a PDF copy of the probation supervisor's email that was located on the floor of Hatziefstathiou bedroom.

Detectives were able to identify the step by step process showing how Hatziestathiou created and posted the falsified racist document on the YC News website.

He created "black out strips" for purported redactions and placed them over parts of the supervisor’s original email dated April 25, 2016, the DA's office said.

From May 24 to 25, 2019, Hatziestathiou created the content of the racist email, superimposed it over the real content of the supervisor’s original email, superimposed the fraudulently created email over a YC News background, and posted it on the YC News website.

Other evidence located were photographs taken of the Delaware County Adult Probation office used for the published story and the use of an online photo editing program. Evidence recovered during the forensic examination identified Hatziestathiou as the possessor and sole user of the MacBook Pro computer used to create, edit, and post the offensive racially charged email investigated.

Multiple devices that belong to Hatziefstathiou were used to commit the above criminal offenses, the DA's office said. Hatziefstathiou uses his iPhone to discuss the racist email with a local politician at the same time Hatziefstathiou was creating the email on his laptop.

Hatziefstathiou is set to turn himself in to authorities Thursday.

As part of the investigation, Delaware County's Department of Information Technology conducted a search for county and court emails with keywords in the email referenced by YC News and did not find evidence of any employee using language Hatziefstathiou reported.

Hatziefstathiou has previously had run-ins with law enforcement in Delaware County. In 2016, drug possession charges filed against him were dismissed in a bizarre case during which Hatziefstathiou allegedly set up a drug deal in order to turn the dealer over to local police.

Before that, he was charged with harassment for sending more than a dozen prostitutes to his neighbor in Broomall and then reported his neighbor for suspicious activity while he watched from his home, according to authorities. Authorities said he used racial slurs toward that neighbor.

“Evidence shows that Nikolaos Hatziefstathiou will use any means to create his false narrative. He will go to any length to do so, trading on the well-earned reputations of a national television producer and a print correspondent, forging government documents, paying to obtain statements from celebrities to create a story for his website, and concocting a racially charged email,” Copeland said. "Creating an article full of lies, Nikolaos Hatziefstathiou attempted to destroy the reputation of hard working people who come to this courthouse every day to serve their community. Hatziefstathiou chose to falsely attribute horrific, racial slurs to good, hard working probation officers, exploiting the real pain that minorities face every day, all in an effort to create racial discord. In one fell swoop he attempted to decimate years of well-earned, good reputations. Some elected officials and politicians jumped on Hatziefstathiou’s bandwagon, knowing these claims may be false, and were willing to believe the very worst about people without a shred of evidence. The fact that they then stood on the county courthouse steps criticizing our innocent county employees is a testament to how little people value the truth. I sincerely hope that the true story about what happened here would receive the same amount of publicity that his crimes did because the hard-working, honest employees of this county deserve nothing less – in fact they deserve an apology.”