Have you seen the mysterious video with a countdown timer purporting to be from Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old “person of interest” in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York last week? The video went viral Monday on YouTube, gaining attention from sites like Hacker News. But it’s completely fake.
Mangione was reportedly in possession of a “manifesto” and a ghost gun and was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday. He was charged with five counts, including carrying a firearm without a license, forgery, false identification to authorities, and criminal possession of a weapon, according to a criminal complaint filed online. But Mangione has not been charged with Thompson’s murder and has not yet been identified as a suspect, although the internet is treating him as one.
A video surfaced Monday that appears to be from a YouTube account associated with Mangione. It opened with the words “Truth” and “If you see this, I’m already under arrest.” It showed a countdown clock that starts by counting from 5 to 1 before flipping to 60 and counting down to zero from there.
The lower right corner included the word “Soon” and briefly flashed the date of Dec. 11 before disappearing again in less than a second. It ended with “Everything is planned, be patient. Bye for now.”
If you want to know what the video actually looked like, you can check it out here, assuming YouTube doesn’t download it either. We promise that we are not trying to trick anyone with it. But it would be interesting to see what the fuss is about after the hoax went viral but missed.
The account was created back in January 2024, and it’s possible that someone is doing some kind of dead man switch—he’s planning a video to be published in the future, with the intention of stopping the automatic publication if they haven’t been arrested (or killed, whatever the case may be). But YouTube confirmed to Gizmodo that it wasn’t true.
“We have suspended the channel in question for violating our impersonation policies, which prohibit content intended to impersonate someone else on YouTube,” a spokesperson for the video platform told Gizmodo via email on Monday.
“The station’s metadata has been updated following widespread reports of Luigi Mangione’s arrest, including updates to the station’s name and handle,” the spokesperson continued. “Additionally, we have taken down 3 other channels of the suspect, in accordance with the Creators Responsibility Guidelines.”
The spokesperson also noted that these accounts had been inactive for months. Who is really behind the video? That remains unknown. But our money is in something related to crypto. Who knows?
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