monday morning

Shaquille O’Neal purchased a black 2025 Land Rover worth a reported $180,000 from an auto broker in Riverside. He paid even more to have it customized for his 7-foot-1 frame.

It was meant to be delivered to Baton Rouge, La., earlier this month but never arrived at its intended destination.

Instead, Shaq’s latest automobile purchase appears to be the “high-value vehicle” that is being investigated as stolen by the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia and thought to be somewhere in Atlanta as of Monday morning.

In a news release last week, the Sheriff’s Office indicated that the vehicle had been “originally ordered through a California-based auto brokerage on behalf of a high-profile client.”

The New York Post was first to report that the client was O’Neal and the company was Riverside’s Effortless Motors. Ahmad Abdelrahman, owner of Effortless Motors, confirmed both facts to The Times during a phone interview.

Abdelrahman said his company had provided O’Neal with numerous customized vehicles over the last two years. He referred to the NBA and Louisiana State legend as “an amazing human being” and said that Effortless Motors was offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the vehicle.

“The last guy you want to steal a car from is Shaquille O’Neal, you know?” Abdelrahman said. “I’ve never had this happen to us before. We do all his vehicles. We’ve transported deals for him hundreds of times, and something like this is definitely insane.”

In a statement emailed to The Times on Monday, the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office said that its criminal investigations division “is actively investigating the theft of a high-value vehicle that was fraudulently removed from a business in the Dahlonega area earlier this month. Investigators have confirmed that the vehicle was transported from a local fabrication business under false pretenses and is believed to have been taken to the Atlanta metropolitan area.”

The department added that multiple search warrants had been obtained and executed as part of the investigation and several people of interest had been identified.

Abdelrahman told The Times that O’Neal’s Land Rover was customized locally by Effortless Motors but was supposed to have additional fabrication work done in Georgia before completing its trip to Louisiana.

After learning that the vehicle never arrived in Baton Rouge, Abdelrahman said, he contacted the company he had hired to ship the vehicle, FirstLine Trucking LLC, and was told that “their system was hacked.”

“They never got our order,” Abdelrahman said he was told, “and the hackers intercepted the vehicle and picked it up, and they vanished with the car.”

FirstLine Trucking did not immediately respond to messages from The Times. O’Neal has not publicly commented on the matter.

It seems Elmo’s world recently included vitriolic racist, antisemitic and foul-mouthed social media posts.

“Sesame Street’s” perpetually 3½-year-old mascot caught his social media fans off guard over the weekend as he seemingly traded in his wholesome tweets on X for hateful posts, including calling for violence against the Jewish community and others using lewd language to demand that President Trump release Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list,” alleging he was involved in the late financier’s sex trafficking operation. The obscenity-laden posts shared Sunday went viral, with screenshots also making the rounds. As of Monday morning, the posts had been scrubbed from Elmo’s page.

A spokesperson for Sesame Workshop, the organization behind “Sesame Street” and Elmo, told the Associated Press in a statement, “Elmo’s X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages including antisemitic and racist posts.”

“We are working to restore full control of the account,” the spokesperson added.

A representative for X did not immediately confirm the alleged hack or provide additional information to The Times on Monday.

In addition to the problematic tweets, the alleged hacker left a mysterious link on the beloved puppet’s page. The link, which has since been removed, redirected followers and internet sleuths to a user’s Telegram channel. On Telegram, the user appears to take credit for the hack. “Thanks Elmo,” reads one Telegram message shared Sunday, the same day Elmo’s odd posts hit the timeline.

In another Telegram message, the user praises Adolf Hitler and rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West), who has his own handful of controversies involving antisemitism and hateful comments.

The since-deleted tweets presented a very dramatic tone shift in the red furball’s online presence. Elmo, whose X activity mostly consists of photos with friends and wholesome greetings, notably broke the internet last year with an innocuous post: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”

The tweet, which is pinned to the top of Elmo’s profile, prompted some brutal honesty from a range of followers. “Resisting the urge to tell Elmo that I am kinda sad,” replied “West Side Story” star Rachel Zegler.

Fielding online confessions of existential dread and general anxiety, Elmo responded to fans that he “learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.”

He added: “Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.”

In the wake of the viral tweet, Sesame Workshop also offered fans and followers a mental health resource guide on its website, reminding users on X that “Mental health is health!”

Clearly, the alleged hacker didn’t get the memo on Elmo’s longstanding agenda of kindness and compassion.

Former Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.