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NFL Player Gets Hacked on Live TV

NFL prospect gets hacked during the NFL 2016 Draft show

Apr 29, 2016 19:47 GMT  ·  By
Laremy Tunsil with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell
   Laremy Tunsil with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Last night, during the first round of the NFL 2016 Draft, Laremy Tunsil, a college football player for Ole Miss, had his Twitter and then Instagram accounts hacked. The hacker posted incriminating content on these accounts, causing the player to slide down draft boards and get selected much later than previously thought.

At the end of the NFL 2015 season, many experts had Tunsil as the most talented player coming out of college, expecting him to be the first pick in the NFL Draft, an event where NFL teams select one by one, across seven rounds, a college player for the upcoming season.

Things changed after the NFL Combine, but Tunsil remained a top five pick, and NFL experts still considered him one of the most talented players entering the Draft.

Tunsil had his Twitter account hacked...

All of Tunsil's expectations took a sad turn last night, an hour before the Draft, when it appears that someone hacked his Twitter account and posted a video of him smoking a substance (allegedly marijuana) through a bong attached to a gas mask.

Even if the presence of marijuana was not confirmed, and even if Tunsil never failed a drug test in college and before the Draft, teams overreacted, and many took him off their boards completely.

A talented player, expected to go in the early picks of the draft, he slid down out of the top ten and was eventually drafted by the Miami Dolphins at #13. Because the NFL uses a rookie salary scale, this drop cost Tusnil around $7 million dollars from his contract.

... and then his Instagram account

But things didn't stop here. Just moments after getting drafted, the hacker returned and uploaded two photos to Tunsil's Instagram account, after his management disabled his Twitter profile.

The photos showed conversations between Tunsil and one of his Ole Miss college coaches, with the former asking for money for bills and the latter agreeing to supply it. This is prohibited by NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) rules.

As soon as the hacking happened, everybody's eyes turned to Tunsil's stepfather, who sued him twice, the last time just a week before the draft.

Everybody suspected Tunsil's stepfather

In an interview with NFL Network host Deion Sanders right after getting drafted, Tunsil declined to point the finger at his stepfather. His stepfather, in turn, denied leaking the video or hacking his stepson's social media accounts, according to TMZ.

As for the Instagram photos, Tunsil himself acknowledged receiving money from Ole Miss coaches, validating that he was really hacked, and that this was not just a weird media stunt. Repercussions against his former college are bound to follow from the NCAA.

The lesson from this is that it doesn't matter what your profession is. All users should secure their accounts, or they'll find themselves hacked in the most inappropriate moments.