Hacking of social media accounts is a common occurrence and could happen to anyone. But when it happens to important people in the sport, especially in NASCAR, which is a tight-knit community, it often stands out. This happened to two prominent faces from NASCAR as they saw their social media accounts hacked as part of a cryptocurrency scam.
NASCAR official’s social media gets hijacked
On the 16th of April, fans began noticing that the recent social media posts from the NASCAR HoF Exec. Director Winston Kelley and former JGR driver J. J. Yeley were rather questionable. Both were posting screenshots of (seemingly) fake trades through which they seemed to have made great profits, and they pointed fingers at investing in a certain cryptocurrency.
However, this was a huge scam. Both of their social media accounts had been hacked. Once it was clear, the official NASCAR Hall of Fame handle was quick to address this discrepancy, as they released an official statement through the same platform.
“Please be advised that our Executive Director’s X account @WinstonKelley has been hacked, and recent posts are not legitimate. We are in the process of working with the real Winston Kelley to recover his account.”
Please be advised that our Executive Director’s X account @WinstonKelley has been hacked and recent posts are not legitimate. We are in the process of working with the real Winston Kelley to recover his account.
— NASCAR Hall of Fame (@NASCARHall) April 16, 2026
Once Yeley got access to his account, he came out clear with a tweet on X about what exactly had happened.
“Sorry for the confusion… I was hacked and lost access to my account. Thank you @NASCAR for assistance with X getting control back of my account… Unfortunately, I did not make $104k in crypto this week,” the tweet read.
Interestingly, the fake posts on both accounts seemed to be tagging an individual account by the name of Mariann Brooklyn on the platform (@MariannBrooklyn). This particular account owner claims to be a trader, but it is a seemingly fake account, created for possible phishing.
Although one might think that NASCAR executives and drivers would be safe from these cyberattacks, it is quite apparent that this is not the case. In fact, just last year, there was a massive data breach in the sport.
When NASCAR was threatened with a major cyberattack
In April of 2025, NASCAR’s online systems seemingly came to a halt. The sport revealed that there had been a major cyberattack and that sensitive information had been stolen from their servers.
As per the authorities, hackers had access to the sport’s network between March 31st and April 3rd, 2025, and they managed to steal huge chunks of data, which included the social security numbers of individuals in the sport. NASCAR was quick to react to this information. They informed the affected individuals through written notification letters, retained a cybersecurity firm to investigate the matter, and notified law enforcement.
Later, the Medusa ransomware group claimed that they had stolen roughly 1 TB of data from NASCAR’s servers and demanded a $4 million ransom to return the information. However, the sport did not confirm this.
Formula 1 also witnessed something similar just months later in June of 2025. A group of ‘white hat’ hackers had managed to find a loophole in FIA’s cybersecurity and breached their servers. They were able to access sensitive information from a 7,000-driver database. However, they reported the vulnerability to the FIA. This is the process that ‘white hat’ hackers usually go through, as they are not known for exploiting the cybersecurity loopholes.
But both of these events, including the hacking of Winston Kelley and J. J. Yeley’s social media accounts, paint a dire picture for the sport. In an era where practically all processes are digitized, these hackings prove to be a massive threat to security. While NASCAR was quick to make note of these breaches, it is unknown if a similar issue might happen again in the future.
