The tech giant has blamed the incident on a “fake edit” on its mapping platform.
The White House was briefly renamed ‘Epstein Island’ for some Google Pixel phone users, the Washington Post has reported.
The term is used to refer to the Caribbean island of Little St. James, which had been owned by the late convicted pedophile Jeffry Epstein. According to the prosecutors, it served as the venue for sex trafficking and other abuses involving some high-profile figures in business and politics.
WaPo said in an article on Saturday that when its journalist tried calling the White House switchboard earlier this week, the name on screen indicated that they were contacting “Epstein Island.”
Only users of Google’s Pixel phones experienced the issue. For those calling the presidential residence from other Android phones and iPhones, no name was displayed, the report read.
Google spokesperson Matthew Flegal later told the paper that there was a “fake edit” in Google Maps that had been “briefly” picked up in the call identification feature of some Android phones.
The user behind it has been identified and blocked from making further edits because his actions violated Google’s policies, Flegal said.
The White House’s name has been restored on the mapping platform, he added.
The US Department of Justice released the final batch of over 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images relating to Epstein’s case in January. The details of the Wall Street financier’s dealings with some of the most powerful people in the US and UK have only worsened the scandal.
US President Donald Trump had ordered the agency to release the files in November, following intense pressure from the lawmakers and his own supporters. The documents mention Trump’s name over 5,000 times, but without any indication of criminal activity. However, they have been heavily redacted, leaving many critics unconvinced.
The president has repeatedly denied having been friends with the disgraced financier, saying that he “never went to the infested Epstein island but, almost all of these Crooked Democrats, and their Donors, did.”
A poll from the left-wing Zeteo website earlier this month found that 52% of those surveyed believed that Trump launched the ongoing war against Iran in order to distract the public from the Epstein files.
Image credit: Tabrez Syed
