Are viral posts claiming Cole Allen, the suspect in the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting, worked as a security staff member for sports teams real? No, that's not true: The false claim is part of an AI-generated series of articles and posts created by a spam operation managed from Vietnam. Fake fan pages are used to target North American and European Facebook users with nearly-identical posts naming dozens of actors, musicians, athletes and sports teams.
Among the false posts Lead Stories found is a post (archived here) published by the West Coast Sluggers Facebook page on April 26, 2026. It read:
BREAKING: The shooter at the White House Correspondents' Dinner has been identified as 30-year-old Cole Allen from Torrance, California. Prior to the incident, he worked as a security staff member for the Los Angeles Dodgers and had appeared multiple times at their games.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Apr 28 04:33:53 2026 UTC)
(Image source: West Coast Sluggers Facebook page)
A Google search (archived here) for the keywords "cole allen worked security for Los Angeles Dodgers" found no results supporting the claim that Allen worked as a security officer for the Dodgers.
A Facebook search (archived here) for "Prior to the incident, he worked as a security staff member for" found 19 nearly-identical posts claiming Allen worked as a security staffer for a sports team.
(Image source: Lead Stories montage of Facebook screenshots)
The Facebook pages hosting these posts are all managed from Vietnam. The profile page (archived here) for Arch City Blitzers page, which posted the claim about the St. Louis Cardinals, shows three accounts manage the page from Vietnam.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Arch City Blitzers Facebook page)
The West Coast Sluggers post links to an article (archived here) titled "Shohei Ohtaпi Sparks Natioпwide Debate After Refυsiпg to Wear LGBT Pride Armbaпd" It has nothing to say about Allen's purported work as a security staffer for the Dodgers.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of goldflow.daily24.world)
Another feature of this article and the posts is the use of lookalike Cyrillic letters used in place of Latin letters, which may be an attempt to evade automated content moderation.
Lead Stories also identified and debunked a series of fake posts from the same operation claiming that Cole Allen worked as a production crew member on films and tours for a dozen actors and musicians. Another series Lead Stories fact checked falsely claimed that Allen worked as a driver for dozens of celebrities.
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. Recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country are available here.
Lead Stories has published a primer -- or a prebunk -- on how to identify these kinds of fake posts exported from Vietnam. It is titled "Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam.'"
