Korby Strube

Introduction

Korby Allen Strube, a 29-year-old from Horton, Kansas, was arrested in Florida and charged with 25 felony counts after investigators alleged he posted a spree of antisemitic death threats on X targeting conservative commentator Ben Shapiro — including a daily countdown pointing toward Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. A judge ordered him held without bail at a hearing on September 13, 2026, and the case has drawn national attention both for its religious-bias allegations and for Shapiro’s own account of living under daily security concerns.

Background Information

Strube is from Horton, Kansas, a small town in Brown County in the state’s northeast corner. According to coverage of the court records, he played basketball for Jackson Heights in 2015, and his family has deep roots in the region’s agricultural community — his grandfather, Marvin E. Strube, was a lifelong farmer who died at 82 in Whiting, Kansas, in July 2025. Nothing in the public record before this case suggested a history of violence. Shapiro, the alleged target, is a Palm Beach County resident who relocated his primary residence from California to Boca Raton in late 2020, placing him in the jurisdiction where the charges were brought.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The claims in this section come from a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office report and a probable-cause affidavit described in court-record coverage, which report substantiating evidence including Strube’s own admission to a Secret Service agent. The threats are allegations at the charging stage: Strube has been charged but not tried, and the account of hacked-computer/identity-theft noted below is his claimed defense. The threat posts on X were made between July 31 and August 2, 2026, from an account under the name “Korby” at the handle @ksqcrzk, according to the sheriff’s report; the posts threatened to kill Shapiro, specifically noted that he is Jewish, and repeatedly referenced “51 days” or “52 days left” — a countdown investigators calculated pointed to September 21 or 22, dates corresponding to Yom Kippur. The affidavit also cites what investigators described as antisemitic references involving “Semites,” “tel aviv” and a “foreign government,” and posts explicitly referencing killing Shapiro “for being Jewish.”

The Palm Beach County case surfaced through an unrelated federal contact. On August 4, the U.S. Secret Service’s Kansas City office, joined by the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, went to Strube’s home in Hiawatha, Kansas, to question him about separate threats toward the president and the Obamas. Strube admitted posting the threatening social-media content, investigators said, and acknowledged operating three X accounts — but the Secret Service agent said he was not aware of the Shapiro threats at the time, his focus being solely the presidential threats. Investigators traced the Shapiro-threat account to Strube through information on the account itself and records from X, Google and Starlink; Starlink records identified Strube as the subscriber associated with an internet session on August 1, the same day most of the threatening posts were made. The agent leading the federal inquiry noted Strube may have been suffering from a mental illness and found Strube’s claim that his computer had been hacked and his identity possibly stolen to be inconsistent with the evidence collected and with Strube’s own statements.

According to the affidavit, investigators found probable cause to charge Strube with 23 counts of making written or electronic threats to kill or cause bodily harm, plus two counts of using a two-way device to facilitate a felony, with prosecutors seeking reclassification of the counts based on alleged religious prejudice. Shapiro’s private security firm, Fortified Risk Group, had been monitoring the account and provided screenshots of the posts to investigators.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Strube was arrested Saturday, September 12, 2026, and at a court hearing the next day a judge ordered him held in the Palm Beach County jail without bail on the 25 felony counts. Shapiro told investigators the threats were “not veiled,” said the countdown suggested planning around a specific date, and reported that the threats increased his anxiety, though he did not change his daily routine; he said he believed his religion was at least part of the motivation and wanted to pursue charges. Shapiro — who, in a separate interview published the same week as the New York Post’s report, acknowledged that “security is a real concern” in his daily life — has not otherwise publicly commented on the arrest. The X account that carried the Shapiro threats has been suspended or deleted, but coverage of the affidavit noted a second account still active with other death threats and countdowns targeting political figures including Shapiro, President Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Rogan.

Under Florida law, a written or electronic threat to kill is a second-degree felony carrying up to 15 years, and the state’s hate-crime statute allows prosecutors to elevate the offense one degree — to a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years — when prejudice, including religious bias, is shown.

Current Status

As of mid-September 2026, Strube remains jailed without bail in Palm Beach County awaiting proceedings on the 25 state felony counts. The charges are accusations at the pretrial stage — no trial date has been reported, and Strube has not been tried or convicted of anything in connection with them. It remains unclear whether he will face additional federal charges tied to the separate presidential-threat investigation out of Kansas that first brought law enforcement to his door.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The arrest ended whatever anonymity Strube had: a 29-year-old from a small Kansas farming town is now a named defendant in a high-profile Florida prosecution, held without bail and facing up to 15 years on each threat count — potentially 30 if hate-crime reclassification applies — over posts investigators say he admitted making. His digital life has been dismantled alongside his freedom: the @ksqcrzk account is suspended, and coverage of the affidavit identified a second active account in his alleged orbit of anonymous threat-making. The mental-illness observation in the federal agent’s report and Strube’s hacked-computer claim frame the likely defense in a case whose resolution — on charges carrying decades in aggregate — will define the rest of his life.