Is it true that in 2013 there was an email from an unknown source saying that a "new Brazilian just arrived, sexy and cute" and that she was nine years of age
Executive summary
The viral claim that a 2013 email to Jeffrey Epstein announced a "New Brazilian just arrived: sexy and cute 9-year-old" is not supported by the documents and fact-checking published so far: investigators who reviewed the original record say the email referred to a 19-year-old and that the "9-year-old" reading is a formatting/OCR error that crept in during PDF conversion or flattening [1] [2]. Some social posts and screenshots do show "=9yo" in versions of the file, but fact-checkers located a scanned copy that clearly reads "19yo," and explain why export/encoding artifacts can turn "19" into "=9" [2] [1].
1. The claim being circulated and where it appeared
A Feb. 3, 2026 social post on X (archived) spurred the current wave of attention by captioning an image "New Brazilian just arrived: sexy and cute 9-year-old," asserting a 2013 email to Epstein referenced a nine-year-old; that post and similar shares are the origin of the viral allegation [1] [2]. Other reposts and forum threads amplified the line of inquiry into alleged protection of powerful people, but those are reactions to the same screenshot-based claim rather than new documentary evidence [3].
2. What the documents show when examined by reporters
Lead Stories and Yahoo's fact checkers located what they describe as the original or a scanned printout of the January 17, 2013 email; in that version the line is plainly "19yo" in a sans-serif, blue typeface, not "9yo" [2] [1]. Those outlets explain that the version showing "=9yo" or "9-year-old" appears to be the product of optical-character-recognition (OCR) or PDF conversion errors that can leave encoding marks—such as an errant equals sign—while flattening or exporting messages into searchable PDFs [2].
3. Why an OCR/formatting glitch can produce a dramatically different meaning
Technical conversion processes used when emails are exported into evidence repositories or PDFs sometimes insert artifacts or misread characters; when "19" is mis-parsed or broken across encoding markers, an equals sign can be left in place of the character that was meant to modify the number, producing something like "=9" that reads to a casual viewer as "9" [2]. Fact-checkers point to the appearance of different fonts and colors in the scanned printout as consistent with a separate, readable source that uses "19yo," supporting the interpretation that the "=9yo" string is a formatting artifact rather than the original text [2] [1].
4. Counter-evidence and why some people still see "=9yo"
Some users posting on Threads and elsewhere pointed to a DOJ-hosted PDF URL and screenshots in which the text appears as "=9yo," asserting the document "does say '=9yo'" and treating that rendering as proof of a nine-year-old reference [4]. That rendering does exist in some distributed files or thumbnails, which helps explain why the claim gained traction; however, fact-checkers who tracked down different versions of the same record found the "19yo" reading and explained how conversion artifacts can account for the discrepancy [2] [1].
5. Context, limits of reporting, and why accuracy matters
Reporting by Lead Stories and Yahoo addresses the specific text in the email and explains a plausible technical pathway for the error, but available sources do not permit a forensic review of every file variant hosted online or in the DOJ dataset—some social posts still display "=9yo" and users have reposted screenshots without provenance [2] [4]. Independent verification here rests on the fact-checkers' document comparisons and their explanation of common OCR/export problems; absent access in these sources to every PDF snapshot, the most supportable conclusion from the cited reporting is that the original email referred to a 19-year-old and that the "9-year-old" version is the result of a formatting glitch or manipulated screenshot [1] [2].