Did Tom Brady and three dozen other sports and entertainment celebrities confirm that Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis, was a relative? No, that’s not true: The claim was made about at least 36 different athletes and entertainers in posts published on dozens of fake Facebook fan pages aimed at American and European audiences, but produced from Vietnam. It’s part of a clickbait operation that uses AI tools described by some fact checkers as “Vietspam”.
One example is a post (archived here) about NFL legend Tom Brady shared by the Wolverine Blitz Facebook page on January 25, 2026. The caption opened:
🚨BREAKING NEWS: The sports and entertainment world is in shock after Michigan Wolverines legend Tom Brady, visibly shaken, confirmed that Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse fatally s.h.o.t on Saturday, was a relative of his. The devastating confirmation comes just hours before Tom’s highly anticipated appearance in Madison.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook
The post continued:
Alex Pretti has now become the center of collective grief and a growing wave of controversy surrounding the use of force, accountability, and the boundaries that were crossed on that Minneapolis street corner.
In an extraordinary act of support, Tom Brady and his family announced they will cover all funeral expenses, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Pretti family during this heartbreaking moment. Tonight, the Kohl Center pauses — not for a performance, but for compassion — as a weekend meant for celebration turns into one of the most painful and unexpected chapters in Tom Brady’s public life.
A Google search (archived here) for the words “Tom Brady Alex Pretti” found no reports that the retired NFL star had made any announcement about being related to Pretti.
The Facebook fan page that published the fictional story about Brady is managed from Vietnam, according to Meta’s transparency data (archived here).
Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook
The text includes a link to an article (archived here) on a website that is also published from Vietnam, according to the website’s Terms and Conditions page (archived here).
Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of livextop.com
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. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here.
A search on Facebook for posts with the words “pretti nurse who was fatally shot was a member of his family” (archived here) brought up the nearly identical false story told about at least 36 celebrities. The list of sports stars, actors, and musicians include:
Image source: Lead Stories screenshots of Facebook
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
