Luigi Mangione, suspected of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was arrested by police Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a customer recognized him from surveillance images.

Mangione, 26, was initially arrested for possession of an unlicensed firearm and other charges, but after a court appearance Monday he now faces a murder charge in Thompson’s death.

In an apparent mockery of Mangione’s arrest, social media users shared what appeared to be a post from McDonald’s rival Burger King, suggesting that the latter restaurant chain had not informed police.

The claim

A post by user @MikeBeauvais on

Beauvais wrote alongside the alleged script: “Luigi Mangione shouldn’t have gone to McDonald’s.” His post has been viewed 5.9 million times at the time of writing.

It was posted by several users

Newsweek has emailed a Burger King media representative for comment.

The facts

This tweet is not real.

Not only has there been no more extensive reporting on this post – which would likely be the case if the post were real – but there are also no live or archived URLs to a real post from the Burger King account. It appears that it was created using an online fake screenshot generator.

The screenshot of the post doesn’t look like a post from X. The font used for the date and time is smaller than in authentic posts. The screenshots also refer to messages and shares between users as “retweets” and “quote tweets,” terms that X no longer uses.

Elon Musk changed the website name from Twitter to X in July 2023 after purchasing the company for a reported $46.5 billion. Verbs that refer to activity on the site, such as “tweet” and “tweet,” have also been removed. The number of reposts and the number of times a post is cited are now only listed numerically next to the corresponding interaction icons.

Newsweek was able to create a near-exact copy of the screenshot using a “tweet generator” website that can generate fake posts.

Although Burger King does not appear to have publicly responded to the post, the lack of sophistication in the creation of the post, whether intentional or not, proves that it is fake.

New images released Tuesday showed Mangione in Altoona McDonald’s where he was taken into custody on Monday.

In photos shared on Pennsylvania State Police social media Tuesday, Mangione, 26, was seen removing his blue face mask to eat a hash brown while leaning against the restaurant’s wall. The suspect in the picture was wearing a mustard-colored hat and a dark jacket.

The verdict

INCORRECT.

Burger King didn’t post “We won’t tell” after Luigi Mangione’s arrest. The post’s screenshot appears to have been created using an online “tweet generator” designed to create fake screenshots.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s fact checking team