The Brazilian Report on Tuesday won the 2024 Digiday Media Award for Best Story for “The plan to hack Brazil’s chief electoral justice,” a scoop published in February 2023.
Other 2024 Digiday winners include TIME magazine, which won both Media Brand of the Year and Content Studio of the Year for its Red Border branded content team.
Salesforce, The Wall Street Journal, The Hershey Company and Fortune are among the other winners of the Digiday Media Awards.
The Brazilian Report’s scoop revealed that notorious hacker Walter Delgatti sought the means to clone the SIM card of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes in order to gain access to the judge’s personal information and dig up dirt that could discredit him.
For the last few years, Justice Moraes has been the main target of the Brazilian far right’s vitriol. Since 2022, he has held the rotating presidency of the Superior Electoral Court, Brazil’s top electoral body.
The week before our story was published, a pro-Jair Bolsonaro senator told Veja magazine that the former president had tried to recruit him to wiretap Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Our story broke previously undisclosed evidence that the plan was actively pursued.
Screenshots and audio messages from Telegram conversations gave proof of Mr. Delgatti’s plans, and he himself confirmed the authenticity of the messages.
Moreover, Mr. Delgatti admitted to reporter Amanda Audi that he was working for far-right Congresswoman Carla Zambelli, despite a court order banning him from using the internet. Ms. Zambelli initially denied employing Walter Delgatti when asked by The Brazilian Report, but several months later admitted to paying the hacker.
According to charges filed by Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet last month, Ms. Zambelli quarterbacked a hacking of the Judicial branch’s computer systems conducted by Mr. Delgatti. Both the congresswoman and the hacker were charged with hacking and fraud — both of which are aggravated because they conspired together.
Mr. Delgatti, who was arrested in August 2023, admitted to the Federal Police his responsibility for issuing a fraudulent arrest warrant against Justice Moraes with the justice’s own signature. He also said that Ms. Zambelli instructed him to hack Justice Moraes’ phone and email should he fail to hack an electronic voting machine.
Days after being arrested, Mr. Delgatti told lawmakers during the select committee on the January 8 riots that he was given a mission by then-President Jair Bolsonaro himself to discredit the electoral system.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in an unrelated case for hacking the phones and messaging apps of 126 people in 2019, several of them Brazilian officials related to the massive Car Wash anti-corruption taskforce. Mr. Delgatti’s credentials as one of the hackers responsible for this case attracted the attention of the far right, their logic being that the testimony of someone who paid a huge service to the left wing would be undisputed by the movement.
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