Christopher Stanley (pictured), a 33-year-old former engineer at X and SpaceX, is embedded in the Deputy Attorney General’s office, once again blending Musk-world chaos with US federal bureaucracy.

Stanley made his bones peddling pirated ebooks, hacked game mods and dodgy software through a web of sites like fkn-pwnd.com and reneg4d3.com, which boasted banners like “Fucking Up Servers!” and doodles of genitalia. "Got admin access," he crowed in one 2008 post, calling rival site admins “stupid noobs.”

His old handle, Reneg4d3, is still in use, linking him to a long list of dodgy domains once packed with contraband. Internet Archive snapshots show Stanley boasting of hacking PayPal accounts, cracking StickAM (a now-defunct video platform), and allegedly annoying South Korean gaming giant Nexon enough to earn a lawsuit threat.

"They did not take kindly to this," he wrote.

In 2014, he posted a video of himself breaching Lizard Squad’s customer database, apparently doxxing fellow hackers for kicks. That clip—featuring Stanley's Reneg4d3 persona and a photo with Musk—went private just hours after Reuters began asking questions.

Despite all this, the Justice Department says Stanley holds an active security clearance and was brought into DOJ through Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a Trump-era scheme designed to torch bureaucracy.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said it has “full trust and confidence in Chris’s ability to help the federal government.”.

Stanley, like his DOGE colleagues, isn’t pulling a federal salary—he’s listed as a “special government employee.” His LinkedIn still ties him to X and SpaceX, not the DOJ.

Digital security expert Dan Guido argued that youthful hacking exploits aren’t a dealbreaker, calling Stanley’s career arc “a way I’ve seen a lot of people learn.”

 But Jonathan Rusch, a former DOJ prosecutor, wasn’t buying it: “I would have very serious concerns… he had disclosed data which he had acquired apparently illegally.”

Another DOGE staffer, Edward Coristine, was caught up in cybercriminal infrastructure. “We need a full investigation into WHO is working for DOGE,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee posted on X.