As demonstrations in Los Angeles over immigration raids unfolded in recent days, social media users falsely cited a Craigslist ad as evidence that protesters had been paid to participate.
“We are forming a select team of THE TOUGHEST dudes in the area,” the ad, which is no longer live, read. “This unit will be activated only when the situation demands it — BUT YOU GET PAID EVERY WEEK NO MATTER WHAT. high-pressure, high-risk, no room for hesitation. We need individuals who do not break, panic, or fold under stress and are basically kickass dudes.” It offered $6,500-$12,500 in compensation per week.
But the ad was a prank, it is not related to the Los Angeles protests.
Here's a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: A Craigslist ad seeking “the toughest badasses in the city” is proof that Los Angeles demonstrations over immigration raids are made up of paid protesters.
THE FACTS: This is false. The ad, which appeared in Craigslist's Los Angeles section for general labor jobs, was bait for a prank show and had nothing to do with the protests in Los Angeles, the ad's creator told The Associated Press. It was posted on Thursday, the day before the protests began. In a livestreamed episode on Friday, the show's hosts called and spoke with people who responded to the ad.
“I literally had no idea it was ever going to be connected to the riots. It was a really weird coincidence,” said Joey LaFleur, who posted the ad on Craigslist.
The ad was developed as part of a new prank show called “Goofcon1,” said LaFleur, who hosts the podcast with Logan Quiroz. On their show Friday, the day protests began, they spoke live on the phone with people who responded during Goofcon1’s third episode. LaFleur noted during the episode that he also posted a more “militaristic” version of the ad in Craigslist’s Austin section, but didn’t get many responses.
Screenshots of the ad were used in social media posts on multiple platforms, cited as proof that those involved in the Los Angeles protests had been paid. The posts gained tens of thousands of likes, shares, and views.
“CALIFORNIA RIOT IS A FUNDED OPERATION,” reads one X post sharing the ad. “Destabilizing the Trump administration and the United States in general is the goal. Then, they receive billions of federal funding to ‘fix’ the damage and pocket the money.”
A TikTok video sharing the ad viewed approximately 14,100 times called protesters “paid agitators” who are turning “what was initially a peaceful protest of just marching into a full-blown riot.”
Others pointed to the ad as evidence that the protests “aren't organic” or have been faked by Democrats.
After screenshots of the ad spread on social media, LaFleur posted about the confusion on his Instagram story multiple times.
“Accidentally goofed the entire nation on the latest @goofcon1,” one post reads. In another, he muses: “I don't really know what to do with any of this. I guess get on Newsmax, or something. If I get on Newsmax, that could be funny.”
False claims about paid protesters regularly spread around demonstrations, especially those that attract national or international attention. Similar false claims spread widely in 2020 during demonstrations over George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
Protesters gather near the metropolitan detention center Monday, June 9, 2025, in downtown Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)
Protesters prepare to launch projectiles during protests over the Trump administration's immigration raids in Los Angeles, Monday, June 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
The man suspected in last weekend's attack at Brown University and the fatal shooting of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor days later had been dead for two days when found, an autopsy determined.
Authorities found Claudio Neves Valente dead at a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday night.
New Hampshire’s attorney general announced Friday that Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who had been living in the U.S., died on Tuesday, the same day that his countryman, MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro died at a hospital.
Authorities believe that after killing two students and wounding nine others at Brown last Saturday, Neves Valente shot Loureiro at his Boston-area home on Monday night.
Neves Valente and Loureiro had attended the same school in the 1990s, though authorities haven't said why they think he killed the professor.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Investigators on Friday were trying to sort out why a former Brown University student allegedly opened fire on the campus decades after he dropped out and later gunned down an esteemed Massachusetts college professor he attended school with in Portugal in the 1990s.
Claudio Neves Valente, who, like Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, was a Portuguese national living in the U.S., was found dead Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Providence's police chief, Col. Oscar Perez.
The discovery of the 48-year-old Neves Valente's body at a New Hampshire storage facility ended the nearly weeklong hunt for the person who killed two students and wounded nine others in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday. Investigators believe the onetime Brown student killed Loureiro in his home in Brookline, a Boston suburb about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Providence, on Monday. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.
Portugal’s foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, said Friday that the government was taken aback by revelations that a Portuguese man is the main suspect in the mass shooting at Brown and the killing of Loureiro. Police in Portugal said they were contacted by U.S. authorities Thursday once Neves Valente was named.
Rangel said Portugal has provided “very broad cooperation” in the case. He said in comments to the national news agency Lusa that “the investigation is far from over.”
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled there as a graduate student studying physics from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.
“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.
Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. That same year, Neves Valente was let go from his temporary student support and faculty liaison position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s president at the time.
Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It wasn't immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.
After officials revealed the suspect's identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.
There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.
The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.
Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.
After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness — known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.
John said he encountered Neves Valente about two hours before the attack in a bathroom in the engineering building, which was where the shooting occurred, and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. Still before the attack, he again bumped into Neves Valente a couple blocks away and saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.
“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.
His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.
After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.
Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro's in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.
Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.
In Lisbon, he was remembered as a highly regarded researcher and instructor for “all the contributions he gave and what he could still have given, all the equations left unwritten,” said Professor Bruno Gonçalves, head of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at Instituto Superior Técnico.
Gonçalves added, “It is difficult to imagine in what context someone would want to harm someone that works in this field.”
The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.
As for the wounded, three had been discharged and six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said.
Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.
Associated Press reporters Barry Hatton and Helena Alves in Lisbon, Portugal, Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Matt O'Brien in Providence contributed.
A woman lights a candle at a memorial set up in front of the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University in Providence, RI, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mark Stockwell)
Law enforcement officers search the area for the Brown University shooting suspect, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)
FILE - People hold candles during a vigil in Providence, R.I., for those injured or killed in the previous day's shooting on the campus of Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
Law enforcement officers are seen outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)
