‘Hijacked’: Federal Reserve Event Shut Down After Being Bombed With Porn

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller. Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images.

A virtual meeting featuring Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was canceled on Thursday after being “hijacked” and flooded with pornographic images.

Reuters, which had a journalist on the call, reported that a participant in the event named “Dan” began sending pornographic images to the Zoom group a few minutes before the meeting was set to kick off. Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, which hosted the event, quickly canceled it. More than 200 people were reportedly on the Zoom.

“We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret,” Brent Tjarks, executive director of MBCA, said in a statement to Reuters.

He said he doesn’t exactly know what happened, but said a security feature that mutes watchers of the event may have been muted somehow.

Zoom spokesman Matt Nagel even released a statement condemning the incident.

“We have been deeply upset to hear about these types of incidents, and Zoom strongly condemns such behavior,” the spokesman said. “We take meeting disruptions extremely seriously and, where appropriate, we work closely with law enforcement authorities.”

Tjarks said in his statement that he is working with Zoom to put features in place to avoid future “hijacking” incidents.

The Fed released the prepared remarks for Waller and simply said there were “technical difficulties” and the event was canceled. Waller’s remarks were on the economic outlook and struggles with inflation.

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