The video was startling.
Hours after Luigi Mangione was arrested for his alleged role in killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a clip appeared on a YouTube page bearing the suspect’s name and image. Titled “The Truth,” it began with a countdown timer and the message: “If you see this, I’m already under arrest.”
Next, on the bottom-right corner of the screen, appeared the word “Soon…” Then, flashing briefly, was the date “Dec 11th.” The video concluded with a final message: “All is scheduled, be patient. Bye for now.”
The cryptic video has since been deleted from YouTube. It had been uploaded to a channel titled PepMangione — the same username as Mangione’s Twitter account. The YouTube page contained publicly known information about Mangione, such as his age and alma mater.
In the frenzy of news coverage following Mangione’s arrest, the video went viral. But a review of video forensics conducted by The Intercept proves this clip was a hoax.
The video premiered on YouTube on December 9, 2024, at 2:35 p.m. ET. Mangione had been taken into custody hours earlier, at 9:15 a.m. ET. YouTube’s “premiere” function allows a user to schedule a date and time to broadcast a video in advance. That meant it was theoretically possible that Mangione had scheduled the video to be published at a specified time in the future, perhaps postponing the publication time each day until he no longer was able to push it back because he was in custody.
That was the theory originally put forth in an article about the video by Newsweek — prior to an edit that removed this speculation.
But an analysis of video timestamps reveals that the file was only uploaded to YouTube minutes before its premiere time, ruling out the possibility that Mangione had timed its release himself.
There are a few ways to determine when a video was uploaded to YouTube. By querying YouTube, it’s possible to determine the exact time when a video was published on the website — in other words, the first moment it could be viewed.
It’s also possible to determine the exact time when a video was first encoded by YouTube — meaning the moment when a clip was initially uploaded by its creator to YouTube’s servers.
Analyzing video metadata using tools such as ExifTool and MediaInfo, The Intercept determined that this video was encoded and last modified on December 9, 2024 at 2:33 p.m. ET — two minutes before it published on YouTube. By that point, Mangione had already been in custody for hours. Unless he was editing clips while in police detention, this video couldn’t have been uploaded by Mangione.
Another red flag is the YouTube channel itself. The channel was created on January 20, 2024, nearly a year before Thompson’s killing. YouTube channels, however, can be renamed at will — meaning this channel may not have always been named PepMangione. That’s indeed what happened in this case, according to YouTube.
“The channel’s metadata was updated following widespread reporting of Luigi Mangione’s arrest,” a YouTube spokesperson told Newsweek in its updated article, “including updates made to the channel name and handle.”
YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment to The Intercept.
The YouTube channel wasn’t the only dubious social media account to pop up after the suspect’s arrest. An analysis of online platforms shows that a number of accounts similarly named PepMangione on services such as BlueSky and Telegram were created on Monday.