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Have you ever seen a mysterious video featuring a countdown clock purportedly from Luigi MangioneWho is the 26-year-old “suspect” in the murder of UnitedHealth Group CEO Brian Thompson in New York last week? The video went viral on YouTube on Monday, prompting comments like Hacker News. But this is completely false.
Mangione was reportedly in possession of a “manifesto” and a ghost gun and was arrested Monday at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania. According to a criminal complaint, he was charged with five crimes, including possession of a firearm without a license, forgery, lying to authorities and possession of instruments of crime. Publish online. But Mangione has not been charged with Thompson's murder and has not been named as a suspect, although the Internet has identified him as a suspect.
A video surfaced Monday that appeared to come from a YouTube account associated with Mangione. It starts with “The Truth” and “If you see this, I've been arrested.” It has a countdown clock that first counts from 5 to 1, then flips over to 60, and counts down to zero from there.
There is the word “soon” in the lower right corner, and the date of December 11 flashes briefly, and then disappears again in less than a second. It ends with “Everything has been arranged, wait patiently.” Goodbye for now.
If you're curious about what the video actually looks like, you can Check it out hereassuming YouTube doesn't remove this either. We promise we won't try to trick anyone with it. But it's fun, after some prank goes viral and you missed it, to see what all the fuss was about.
The account was created in January 2024, it's entirely possible that someone set up a dead switch-They scheduled a video to be released at some time in the future, with the intention of stopping the automatic posting if they were not arrested (or killed, or whatever the case may be). But YouTube confirmed to Gizmodo that this is not true.
“We terminated the channel because it violated our impersonation policy, which prohibits content on YouTube that is intended to impersonate another person,” a spokesperson for the video platform told Gizmodo via email on Monday.
“Following widespread reports of Luigi Mangione's arrest, the channel's metadata has been updated, including updates to the channel name and handle,” the spokesperson continued. “In addition, in accordance with our Creator Responsibility Guidelines, we terminated three other channels owned by the suspect.”
The spokesperson also pointed out that these accounts have been dormant for several months. Who is behind the film? This is still unknown. But our money is on crypto-related things. Who knows?
