SPAM SCANDAL

MAGA’s Favorite ‘Journalist,’ 24, Issues Humiliating Retraction

The move comes after his accusations prompted a flood of angry calls and messages targeting the family-run business.

MAGA influencer Nick Shirley has issued a retraction and taken down videos accusing a family-run Seattle grocery store, Lam’s Seafood Asian Market, of SNAP fraud, admitting he misrepresented a $120 purchase.

In videos published on Oct. 9 and Oct. 12, the 24-year-old Shirley, who has no journalism background and only a high school education, went undercover to document what he described as a common form of EBT trafficking, in which people exchange food stamp benefits for cash.

The YouTuber and a partner approached a woman on the street, offering to sell her an EBT card loaded with $120 in SNAP benefits for $60.

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The woman then took Shirley and a partner to Lam’s Seafood Asian Market, where she attempted to use the card for what he described as a can of Spam and sushi.

When the transaction came to $120, Shirley suggested the store was facilitating fraud, declaring in a voiceover: “And magically just like that, one can of Spam and one thing of sushi was $120.”

He entered the wrong PIN to avoid completing what he believed was a fraudulent purchase.

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But a closer look at the footage showed the register had rung up a case of Spam containing 24 cans, not a single can.

The store’s operations manager, Teizi Mersai, highlighted the discrepancy in a video posted to Instagram, insisting Lam’s had never participated in EBT trafficking or fraud. The store accompanied the video with the pointed caption: “That wasn’t a $120 can of SPAM. Let’s keep the SPAM in the can—and the facts straight.”

In his retraction, the self-described “100% independent journalist” acknowledged that the woman had been attempting to purchase a case of Spam, explaining why the transaction totaled $120.

He also conceded that he had uncovered no evidence that Lam’s itself engaged in EBT fraud or colluded with the woman.

“I have not uncovered any evidence that Lambs itself engaged in EBT fraud or that Lambs colluded with the woman in the video,” he said, adding that it was never his intention to make incorrect claims about the business.

Shirley said he had removed the videos and defended the correction as part of his responsibilities as a journalist.

“As a journalist, I make sure and try my best to make sure that everything is 100 percent and we do our best, honestly, but we don’t always get it right,” he said. “And when we don’t, it’s very important that we make a correction.”

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The retraction comes after Shirley’s accusations prompted a flood of angry calls and messages targeting the family-run business and its employees.

Shirley had called on X for the FBI and White House Fraud Task Force to “raid, arrest and shutdown this fraud ring.”

Mersai told the Seattle Times the accusations triggered a barrage of angry calls from customers and strangers, sometimes arriving every 15 minutes. Callers were “yelling and saying all kinds of nasty things,” he said.

“It’s been hellish,” he added.

The Daily Beast has contacted Shirley for comment.

Utah-born Shirley has built a following on right-wing content, becoming part of a growing crop of conservative influencers whose brand of advocacy is increasingly packaged as journalism—and welcomed by the Trump administration.

He rose to prominence with videos alleging fraud at Somali-run childcare centers in Minneapolis and state-funded programs in California, claims that have since been extensively challenged. Yet his work has helped fuel investigations and law enforcement action under Trump.

Despite telling his 1.35 million subscribers he aims to “bring the truth to all,” Shirley has faced questions about how he manufactures his viral moments.

In a previous video, “I Took Migrants to Visit Joe Biden,” he rounded up people in Washington, D.C., drove them to the White House to demand a meeting with Biden and paid each participant $20.

He has also been confronted by CNN over his reporting, but has dismissed scrutiny as an attempt by the “mainstream media” to attack him and politicize his claims.

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