Have you seen a mysterious video featuring a countdown clock that purports to be from Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old “person of interest” in last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York? The video went viral Monday on YouTube, getting attention on sites like Hacker News. But it’s completely fake.
Mangione reportedly had a “manifesto” as well as a ghost gun and was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday. He was charged with five crimes, including carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to authorities, and possessing instruments of crime, according to a criminal complaint posted online. But Mangione wasn’t charged with the murder of Thompson and hasn’t been named as a suspect, despite the fact that the internet is treating him as one.
A video popped up on Monday that appeared to be from a YouTube account associated with Mangione. It opened with the words “The Truth” and “If you see this, I’m already under arrest.” It featured a countdown clock that first counted from 5 to 1 before flipping to 60 and counting down all the way to zero from there.
The lower right corner included the word “Soon” and briefly flashed the date Dec. 11 before disappearing again in less than a second. It ended with the words “All is scheduled, be patient. Bye for now.”
If you’re curious what the video actually looked like, you can check it out here, assuming YouTube doesn’t take this one down, too. We promise we’re not trying to trick anyone with it. But it can be interesting to see what the fuss is all about after some hoax has gone viral but you missed it.
The account was created back in January 2024, and it’s entirely possible for someone to set up a kind of dead man’s switch—they schedule a video to publish at some future time, intending to stop the auto-publish if they have not been arrested (or killed, or whatever the scenario might be). But YouTube confirmed to Gizmodo that it wasn’t real.
“We terminated the channel in question for violating our policies covering impersonation, which prohibit content intended to impersonate another person on YouTube,” a spokesperson for the video platform told Gizmodo over email Monday.
“The channel’s metadata was updated following widespread reporting of Luigi Mangione’s arrest, including updates made to the channel name and handle,” the spokesperson continued. “Additionally, we terminated 3 other channels owned by the suspect, per our Creator Responsibility Guidelines.”
The spokesperson also noted that these accounts had been dormant for months. Who is actually behind the video? That remains unknown. But our money is on something related to crypto. Who knows?