Caroline Calloway, inset: Luigi Mangione Noam Galai/Getty Images ; Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Social media influencer Caroline Calloway is claiming to have a connection to Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man suspected of shooting and killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“OMG GUYS I LITERALLY F—ED THE UNITED HEALTHCARE CEO ASSASSIN,” Calloway, 33, wrote via X on Monday, December 9, the same day that Mangione was apprehended by law enforcement officials while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He has since been charged with murder in New York and is facing four additional charges, including one count of forging a document and criminally possessing a firearm, CNN reported.
In a subsequent tweet, Calloway wrote, “Ok technically he was not an assassin when we f—ed. … That I know of. But still!!!!”
Some people were quick to express doubts about the accuracy of Calloway’s claim.
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“Receipts Caroline we need receipts,” one X user wrote, while another person chimed in, “God-tier grifter.”
Calloway has been called out for living a lie before. In a 2019 essay for The Cut titled “I Was Caroline Calloway,” Calloway’s ex-friend Natalie Beach recalled getting paid to ghostwrite Calloway’s Instagram captions, discovering that Calloway had bought fake social media followers and helping Calloway write her book. (Calloway got a six-figure book deal to write a memoir called School Girl but withdrew from the agreement in 2017, returning most of her $100,000 advance.)
“Caroline was caught between who she was and who she believed herself to be, which in the end may have been the most relatable thing about her,” Beach wrote. “This is why, when people ask me if Caroline is a scammer, I try to explain that if she is, her first mark is always herself.”
Luigi Mangione Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Beach’s essay is one of several that appears in her 2023 book, Adult Drama: And Other Essays. Calloway released her own self-published memoir, cheekily titled Scammer, that same year. She publicly celebrated when The New Yorker published a review favorably comparing it to Beach’s essay collection.
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“‘Beach’s book, on the other hand, is almost irritatingly rooted in fact. … Beach’s book is less meandering than Calloway’s, and yet it is also slower and more unsure of itself,’” Calloway wrote via Instagram in July 2023, quoting the New Yorker review. “GOD, MAKE ME THE BIGGER PERSON — JUST NOT YET!!!!!!”
Calloway can be counted on to make eyebrow raising statements online. Her recent claim about Mangione comes months after she said she hadn’t “f—ed someone who can read in two years” during a May appearance on the “No Jumper” podcast.
“I meet them on Hinge, and I think maybe if I go on more than a couple dates with them, they might be able to have enough clues about my life to figure out who I am, but most of them, they don’t ask, and I don’t tell them,” she continued.
Calloway also stirred up controversy in October when she announced via social media that she had no plans to leave her beachfront home in Sarasota, Florida despite dire warnings to evacuate as Hurricane Milton approached land.
“If I actually die in this storm, my books are going to go WAY UP in price. Order now,” she wrote via her Instagram Story at the time.
It’s unclear whether Calloway is telling the truth or joking about her alleged connection to Mangione. Mangione is suspected of shooting and killing Thompson outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel in New York City on Wednesday, December 4. After a five-day search, Mangione was arrested in Pennsylvania on Monday.
