Nick Shirley speaking with attendees at the 2026 Chapter Leadership Summit at the Gaylord National Harbor Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr)
A 24-year-old MAGA influencer celebrated by the right as a grassroots fraud-buster was humiliated after being forced to retract a viral smear against a family-run Seattle grocery store.
Nick Shirley pulled down his October videos targeting Lam's Seafood Asian Market on Wednesday, The Daily Beast reported, conceding the central premise of his investigation had collapsed.
In clips posted Oct. 9 and Oct. 12, Shirley went undercover with a partner in Seattle's Chinatown-International District to document what he called a common form of food stamp trafficking. The pair approached a woman on the street and offered her an EBT card carrying $120 worth of SNAP benefits in exchange for $60 cash.
Shirley then alleged the woman walked into Lam's and bought a single can of Spam and a tray of sushi for $120, framing the inflated price as proof the store was in on the scheme. He tagged the Justice Department, the FBI and the White House on X, demanding federal agents shut Lam's down.
The store said the purchase was actually a full case of 24 Spam cans — a quantity that accounted for the total.
"I have not uncovered any evidence that Lam's itself engaged in EBT fraud or that Lam's colluded with the woman in the video," Shirley said in his retraction, adding he had never intended to make incorrect claims about the business.
He cast the walk-back as professional diligence. "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.
KIRO 7 reported in October that Lam's was fielding abusive phone calls and losing customers after the video racked up nearly 600,000 views, with operations manager Teizi Mersai saying the store was weighing legal action.
"He's going after the big headlines, truth be damned," Mersai told the station.
Shirley, who boasts roughly 2 million YouTube subscribers and rose to national prominence after a viral video about alleged Somali daycare fraud in Minneapolis, has been amplified by Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance and FBI Director Kash Patel.
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