STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Fake Listing

Did UnitedHealthcare list a job opening for the CEO position on LinkedIn shortly after former CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot? No, that's not true: A UnitedHealthcare communications director told Lead Stories that a screenshot the supposed job listing was "fake." Lead Stories did not find any evidence that this was an actual listing. As of December 9, 2024, there was no CEO job opening posted on LinkedIn or UnitedHealthcare's online careers page.

The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here), published on December 5, 2024. Its caption read:

CEO killed yesterday; job position already posted lol... look at the applicants lol. Stop sacrificing your time and family for companies that view you as a mere means to an end.

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Dec 9 14:23:50 2024 UTC)

The post on Facebook was shared after Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot in New York City on December 4, 2024.

Lead Stories contacted UnitedHealthcare, and Anthony Marusic, a communications director for the company, responded by email on December 9, 2024, saying:

The LinkedIn post is fake. Someone created a duplicate and used that. It was never posted on LinkedIn.

Lead Stories follow up with Marusic for more information and in a December 10, 2024, email, he said:

... someone must have created a fake account or issued a fake job listing. UHC did not issue any job listing ... We did not post any job opening.

Reverse image searches of the listing did not yield results that would corroborate the claim of a genuine job listing. The results, here and here (archived here and here, respectively), showed social media accounts that had shared the fake job listing.

A search for this listing on Google also yielded no results (archived here). A search on LinkedIn returned 394 jobs UnitedHealthcare was hiring for as of December 9, 2024. None of those were for a CEO position, as evidenced in the screenshot below:

(Source: LinkedIn screenshot taken on Mon Dec 9 20:02:26 2024 UTC)

A search of UnitedHealthcare's Career page for a full-time CEO role in Minnetonka, Minnesota, where the company is based, produced two results. Neither of those results matched the claim. Evidence of this is below:

(Source: Careers.unitedhealthgroup.com screenshot taken on Mon Dec 9 20:07:58 2024 UTC)

A Google News search for articles reporting on a LinkedIn listing for Thompson's role after his death did not yield any substantial evidence that this post was legitimate (archived here).

The salary listed in the purported LinkedIn post not accurate. Thompson's annual compensation package totaled up to $10.2 million, according to news organizations including NBC, AP and PBS. Lead Stories contacted Marusic to verify this figure and will update this article if a response is received.

At the time this was written, Snopes had reviewed the same claim.

Other Lead Stories fact checks about the shooting of Brian Thompson can be read here.