The Journalist Who Tracked Epstein Island Visitors’ Phones

March 30, 2026·45 min·3 clips

A tech journalist's first day at Gizmodo turned into a nightmare when everyone on his desk was fired except him.

Dhruv Maracha's journey into journalism began not in a newsroom, but while building community cell phone networks in Kenya and Nicaragua using software-defined radios. After teaching himself programming to escape service jobs, he worked at a startup building internet-connected sex toys before transitioning to telecommunications infrastructure projects. His accidental entry into journalism occurred at Standing Rock, where he went to set up cell phone repeaters for Dakota Access Pipeline protesters but ended up tracking mysterious surveillance aircraft using radio equipment. This data caught the attention of reporters and launched his journalism career. His first paid journalism work was with Kashmir Hill at Gizmodo, building a VPN system to help her block major tech companies for her 'Goodbye Big Five' series. When Hill was fired shortly after Maracha was hired, he survived the desk's complete gutting and had to teach himself journalism from scratch, knowing only technical skills like app decompilation and network engineering. At Gizmodo, he struggled against being seen as mere tech support, fighting to prove his reporting abilities while learning what constitutes a compelling story through rapid-fire publishing demands. He spent two years at the Center for Investigative Reporting working on long-term police investigations, which taught him patience for deeper reporting but conflicted with his preference for frequent publishing. At Wired, he hit his stride with innovative stories combining technical expertise and traditional reporting, including tracking IMSI catchers at the Democratic National Convention, analyzing location data from apps, and investigating surveillance technology. His DNC investigation involved walking around Chicago with a backpack full of radio equipment, ultimately detecting what appeared to be a cell phone surveillance device, though authorities denied involvement. He also worked on stories about police body camera Bluetooth signals and ICE 911 calls. Now at Bloomberg, he's part of a 'journalism skunk works' team that starts with technical capabilities rather than traditional beats, focusing on building tools and collecting data at unprecedented scales. Throughout his career, he's advocated for computational journalism techniques to be applied to any story, not just big data investigations, emphasizing that technical skills can provide new angles and access points for traditional reporting. He uses AI as a coding assistant for debugging and efficiency but maintains human oversight for critical data collection tasks. His work demonstrates how the intersection of technical skills and journalistic instincts can reveal stories that would otherwise remain hidden, from government surveillance to corporate data practices.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how technical reporting becomes a real story.

This episode follows Dhruv Maracha, a data journalist and investigator, as he talks through the mix of technical skill and newsroom judgment that shapes his work.

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Why you'd press play

When mobile location data becomes the case file, you want the reporter who can turn code into accountability.

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