The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a statement saying the agency is “aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to individuals around the country.”

The FBI said it’s in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter.

“As always, we encourage members of the public to report threats of physical violence to local law enforcement authorities,” the FBI stated.

According to The Epoch Times, “residents in New York, Alabama, California, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Ohio have reported receiving hateful messages.”

The messages reportedly told recipients they had been “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.”

From The Epoch Times:

The texts, which have been widely shared on social media, varied in wording but had similar tones. Some of the texts instructed individuals to meet at a specific address with their belongings, while other messages did not provide a location.

Some texts mentioned the incoming administration.

California mother Tasha Dunham reported that her teenage daughter received the message the day after the election. The message, which even included her daughter’s name, instructed her to report to a plantation in North Carolina.

“It was very disturbing,” Dunham said. “Everybody’s just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern.”

Students at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, received an alert from campus safety officials, telling students that it is on “high alert” following the matter.

“It’s probably y’all sending them. Pack your bags,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said in response to the FBI’s statement.

Per CBS News:

The texts were sent from numbers with area codes in at least 25 different states, CBS News found. By Thursday, several numbers were disconnected, while others went to voicemail that identified them as TextNow users, a provider that allows people to create phone numbers for free.

TextNow said in a statement that it had “learned that one or more of our accounts may have been used to send text messages in violation of our terms of service,” adding that it shut down the accounts as soon as it became aware.

“We do not condone the use of our service to send harassing or spam messages and will work with the authorities to prevent these individuals from doing so in the future.”

CBS News spoke to one of the individuals who sent a version of the text. The person, whose area code was linked to Fort Wayne, Indiana, said the message was a prank before they abruptly ended the call. Subsequent requests for comment went unanswered.

 

 

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