A 29-year-old Kansas man is being held without bail in the Palm Beach County jail after investigators say he spent days last summer threatening to kill conservative commentator Ben Shapiro because Shapiro is Jewish, with one alleged post counting down toward a date that fell on Yom Kippur. Korby A. Strube, of Horton, Kansas, was arrested Saturday and now faces 25 felony counts tied to the threats.
According to court documents cited by WPBF 25, Strube faces 23 counts of evidence of prejudice while committing written or electronic threats to kill or do bodily harm, plus two counts of evidence of prejudice while committing use of a two-way device to facilitate a felony. Shapiro, a Palm Beach County resident, was identified as the victim in a Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office report, and a judge ordered at a court hearing on Sunday, September 13, 2026, that Strube remain jailed without bail.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office opened its investigation into Strube on August 4, per the sheriff's report cited by the outlet. The threats were traced to an X account under the name Korby, at the handle twitter.com/ksqcrzk, and X later suspended the account. Investigators say the posts, made between July 31 and August 2, threatened to kill Shapiro and specifically noted that he is Jewish.
A Countdown Pointing to a Holy Day
Among the details that alarmed investigators was a daily countdown embedded in the social media posts, according to the sheriff's office report. The countdown pointed toward a possible date range of September 21 to 22, which corresponds to Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Shapiro told investigators he believed the threats were motivated by his Jewish faith and said he had no contact with the account's user before the threats surfaced, per the report described by WPBF 25.
Shapiro's private security firm, Fortified Risk Group, provided screenshots of the X posts to investigators and had been monitoring the account. Shapiro, who relocated his primary residence from California to Boca Raton in late 2020 according to Puck News, has previously said he spends seven figures a year on personal security, a detail he disclosed in a 2024 interview with the South China Morning Post. Shapiro told investigators the threats caused him anxiety and that he wanted to pursue charges against whoever was behind the account.
A Separate Secret Service Contact in Kansas
The Palm Beach case surfaced through an unrelated federal contact. 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, on August 4 to question him about separate threats toward the president of the United States and the Obamas, the sheriff's report states. During that visit, Strube admitted to posting the threatening social media content, according to the Secret Service investigation described in the report.
The agent leading that federal inquiry told investigators he was not aware of, and did not ask about, the separate Palm Beach County threats against Shapiro, since his focus was solely on the presidential threats. That same agent 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. Law enforcement has since confirmed that Strube authored the social media posts, and records show he managed three social media accounts.
During the search of Strube's home, law enforcement found firearms secured inside a gun safe; the report states Strube did not have access to the safe. Strube played basketball for Jackson Heights in 2015, according to MileSplit Kansas. His family has deep roots in the region's agricultural community; his grandfather, Marvin E. Strube, was a lifelong farmer who died at age 82 in Whiting, Kansas, in July 2025, according to an obituary from Mercer Funeral Home.
What Florida's Threat and Hate Crime Laws Mean for the Case
Under Florida Statute § 836.10, making a written or electronic threat to kill or cause bodily harm is a second-degree felony carrying up to 15 years in prison, according to the Sammis Law Firm. Florida's hate crime statute, § 775.085, allows prosecutors to reclassify an offense one degree higher when evidence shows the crime was motivated by prejudice, including religious bias, elevating a second-degree felony to a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years, per Pumphrey Law.
Florida law also covers posting such a threat online, according to attorney Richard Hornsby. That provision is relevant to the Palm Beach County case.
The case also lands amid a documented rise in hate crimes statewide. A 2026 Florida Senate report found overall hate crimes in Florida rose 35.8% between 2022 and 2023. The same report also discussed religiously motivated incidents in 2023 and noted the Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents nationwide in 2024. Florida's 2024 House Bill 187 codified an official statutory definition of antisemitism into state law to help agencies identify anti-Jewish bias.
It remains unclear whether Strube will face additional federal charges tied to the separate presidential-threat investigation out of Kansas, alongside the 25 state felony counts he now faces in Florida. The case follows a string of similar prosecutions Hoodline has tracked in Palm Beach County, including arrests over Instagram threats, 911 text threats aimed at Mar-a-Lago, and ChatGPT-generated threats reported to the FBI, part of a broader pattern of digital threat cases moving through the same jurisdiction this year.
