An email address once used by Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and state Rep. James Talarico (D-District 50) appears in a published adult dating-site breach record listing “FETISH” and “GROUPSEX” among the profile’s interests.
Townhall published the Fling.com entry Friday and promoted its findings in a post on X. Talarico’s attorneys acknowledged that the email address once belonged to him, but denied that he created or used the account. They said someone used a hacked email address.
Talarico’s Instagram account followed additional OnlyFans models and an account advertising escort services, the New York Post reported on November 15, 2025. His campaign told the outlet that Talarico and his team followed supporters with large audiences without investigating their backgrounds, and said he did not know how the women earned money.
A Google AI summary supplied to The Dallas Express describes the site this way: “Fling.com is primarily used by casual daters, adult webcam creators, and people seeking non-monogamous, open-minded, or short-term relationships.”
Fling.com promotes discreet profiles and casual encounters, inviting users to tell their “booty calls & friends with benefits” about the site. Its homepage advertises private webcam chats, public video chat rooms and tipping.
Validated email and matching IP address
The displayed entry lists the username “mohawk787” and a December 26, 2010, account creation date. It marks the email-validation field “Y.”
Cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt published the Fling database structure in 2016. It shows that the field defaulted to “N,” indicating that the displayed record carries a validation flag rather than the default setting.
Townhall also reported a matching IP address in a separate Neopets breach record associated with an email used by Talarico’s sister. The attorneys challenged the inference, saying previously exposed IP data could appear in the dataset without tying Talarico to the account.
Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft called the reported IP match “a digital smoking gun” in a Friday post. He argued that the matching records tied the adult-site entry to the Talarico family’s home internet connection.
Campaign cites bot explanation
“Mr. Talarico never created an account on Fling.com,” his attorneys wrote in their October 30 letter to Townhall.
They said Talarico had stopped using the compromised address and cited a mismatched birth date and ZIP code. They also said a cybersecurity expert hired by the campaign concluded that a bot likely created the account. The letter did not include the expert’s underlying report.
The displayed creation and last-login timestamps fall 54 seconds apart. That gap does not establish a session’s duration or prove whether a person or bot created the account. The published material does not establish who operated it.
Old breach surfaces before Texas election
Have I Been Pwned dates the Fling breach to March 2011 and lists 40.8 million affected email addresses. Friday’s report concerns a record from that old breach.
Talarico faces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in the November 3 election, a contest The Dallas Express previously covered. In-person early voting ends October 30.
