By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
After having its Facebook page hijacked by a hacker, the Wood County Sheriff’s Office is back in control of its social media site as of noon today.
Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn reported that the page is no longer compromised and the posts made by the hacker have been removed.
For the last two days, the sheriff’s office was frozen out of its Facebook page, as a hacker uploaded posts primarily on Jeffrey Epstein.
“We are extremely fortunate to have a local connection with Meta, who helped escalate to gain control over our page again,” Wasylyshyn said. Originally, it was believed the sheriff’s office would have to create a new Facebook page, but that ended up not being the case.
“Our detectives are still investigating to see if it’s possible to find out who compromised our page,” he said.
Wasylyshyn was in Washington, D.C., for a conference when the hacker took over the site, which has approximately 8,000 followers.
“The good news is it didn’t affect operations,” he said.
“We’ve learned from this,” to beef up security on the page, he added.
In response to some commenters criticizing another hack after last year’s ransomware attack which cost Wood County government $1.5 million, Wasylyshyn said the issues are unrelated.
“There is no connection at all,” he said. “I’m not going to pay a penny.”
Detectives at the sheriff’s office have requested subpoenas for the IPS addresses of the hacker, Wasylyshyn said, though the chances of identifying someone are slim.
“We will try to turn every stone,” he said. “Maybe they’re not as smart as they think they are.”
When the hacker’s posts started showing up, commenters questioned why posts about the Epstein files were appearing on the sheriff’s page.
“I didn’t have the sheriff’s office page turns into an Epstein blog on my 2026 bingo card, but here we are,” one person commented.
“This is my new favorite Facebook page,” another wrote.
One questioned if Epstein was actually alive and being housed in the Wood County Jail.
And another offered a reason for the hack. “Someone must be mad you never issue Level 3 snow emergencies.”
It didn’t take long before the hack was reported, with a few people noting misspellings in the posts – including the name of the sheriff’s office.
In addition to the Epstein posts, the hacker also included some random posts including:
- President Donald Trump stating that the U.S. and Italy have been allies since Ancient Rome.
- Vladimir Putin banning all satanic temples and churches in Russia.
- A 110-year-old Australian man, who spent his final days knitting tiny sweaters for injured penguins.
While some of the posts elicited anger from commenters, there were also good-natured comments, like “I love penguins.”
