invalid player data when new friend joins

hello. so this is a native 1.16.5 paper mc server thats been updated to 1.17 spigot then 1.17 paper then 1.17.1 paper. all the old players can join just fine without troubles. however when people who havent joined before joins, a message called "invalid player data" will pop up for them! i dont have any logs to prove it but it happens every time a new player joins

no, heres what i used to figure it out

i have a plugin called discordsrv which relays the entire server log into a discord channel

and then i searched for the new players name (for this example lets just say bobman) oh btw this server is cracked if that has anything to do with it

and then it said bobman joined uuid: etc
and then i went to the player data folder of the server and i did ctrl + f and i searched for the uuid

and there was NOTHING for that player

im completely stumped btw the player that tried to join is joining through geyser if that has anything to do with it

please help