Scammers hijacked Greg Gutfeld's X account on Saturday, firing off identical phishing messages to his more than 3 million followers — a fake voting page designed to steal login credentials.
The Washington Examiner reported that the breach was flagged by Grox, X's AI chatbot, which issued an alert warning that the messages were pushing a bogus link.
A Fox News spokesperson confirmed the hack. Gutfeld, who co-hosts The Five and helms the late-night show Gutfeld!, has not issued a personal statement. His account was placed in "protected" mode Saturday afternoon, barring users from viewing his posts while the situation was being addressed.
The phishing operation wasn't subtle. Gutfeld's compromised account blasted direct messages to followers, urging them to vote for him through a link that led to a credential-harvesting page. The scammers also posted crypto-related content on his timeline — the standard playbook for account takeovers on X.
Several prominent users caught on quickly. Conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller summed up the absurdity:
"If the DM hack is actually going to work they need to start sending me people who I don't already know how they talk."
Influencers including Jarvis, Catturd, and Amuse flagged the scam and warned their followers not to engage with the messages. The speed of the response from conservative figures on the platform likely limited the damage.
Not everyone picked up on it. Former Saturday Night Live star Rob Schneider — who has 2.2 million followers of his own — appeared to take the bait, sharing the scam link along with an enthusiastic post:
"PLEASE VOTE FOR GREG GUTFELD YOU CAN DO IT!!"
A handful of Schneider's followers responded by warning others not to click the link. No word on how many users actually fell for it.
Account compromises on X are nothing new, but this one carries a particular sting. Gutfeld is one of the most-followed conservative voices on the platform, with 3.1 million followers. That's a massive target — and a massive blast radius when a phishing operation succeeds.
The broader question isn't just about Gutfeld. It's about how a platform that positions itself as the global town square handles security for high-profile accounts. Grox, X's AI chatbot, flagged the breach — but an AI alert after millions of messages have already been sent is a fire alarm that goes off once the building is half gone. Detection is useful. Prevention is better.
Conservative media figures have built significant audiences on X, particularly since Elon Musk's acquisition restored many accounts and loosened content moderation. That makes them high-value targets for scammers — and it means the platform has a heightened responsibility to protect those accounts. A verified blue-check host of the most-watched late-night show in cable news shouldn't be this easy to compromise.
As of Saturday afternoon, the situation remained unresolved in any public-facing way. The Washington Examiner had reached out to Fox News for further comment. No investigation has been announced. No details have emerged about how the scammers gained access or whether the account has been fully recovered.
Gutfeld's silence — voluntary or otherwise — leaves a gap. His audience, one of the most engaged conservative followings online, got a firsthand lesson in digital hygiene: if a direct message from someone famous asks you to click a link, it's almost certainly not them.
Three million people received the same lie on Saturday. The ones who didn't click were the ones who knew better than to trust what a screen told them without thinking first. That's a lesson that extends well beyond phishing scams.
