A rumor circulated online in early December 2024 claiming that a screenshot (archived) showed a post from the official Burger King account on X, reading, "We don't snitch." Users discussed this image on Dec. 9, 2024, hours after news broke of a suspect's arrest in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The arrest followed a 911 call from a McDonald's employee, not named by police, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a customer alerted one of the fast-food restaurant's workers. Surveillance footage from Dec. 4 showed a person fatally shooting Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan, and authorities later circulated pictures of a person of interest in the slaying.
One user on X who posted the image added, "Luigi Mangione shouldn't have gone to McDonald's." The name referenced the suspect named by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch — 26-year-old Luigi Nicholas Mangione.
The image displayed 2,400 "retweets," 511 "quote tweets" and 18,700 likes.
However, the Burger King screenshot was fake. We found no record of the official restaurant's account creating any such posts. Further, we located none of the thousands of users who supposedly retweeted or liked the post asking in subsequent posts why the account removed the post.
Following tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform in 2022, he changed the name Twitter to X. Also, the terminology "retweet" and "quote tweet" switched to "repost" and "quote." The fake screenshot showed the older terminology.
For further details about Mangione's arrest, we previously reported about a rumor claiming he used a fake ID to buy food at the McDonald's restaurant.