CEO inserted into viral video portion of satirical Enron relaunch

On By Littum

game

The claim: Video shows Enron CEO being hit in the face with a pie

A December 13 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a man getting hit in the face by a pie in an image that is a screenshot of an X post.

“Enron’s new CEO was hit by a pie in NYC,” it reads X post’s caption.

Several commenters said the video was satire, but others seemed to take it seriously.

“I’ll bet for a second he thought he was dead,” wrote one commenter. Another said: “I hope we can keep this going.”

The photo was shared more than 1,000 times in about two weeks. Similar posts circulated on Thread and Instagram.

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Our Rating: Satire

This post is satire on several levels. The “Enron CEO” pictured is a satirist who adopted Enron’s trademark performance art, and the pie in the face appears to have been staged to resemble an infamous pie attack on Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Enron CEO part of satirical corporate rebrand

Enron was an energy trading company that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 amid revelations, it had overstated its earnings. The The FBI described the case as “the most complex white-collar crime investigation” in the agency’s history.

In 2021, an entity called The College Company LLC took over the registration of the Enron trademark to sell clothing, according to federal patent and trademark applications. The application lists an email address that contains Connor Gaydos’ name as the primary contact. Gaydos and the College Company are also behind Birds Aren’t Real – a satirical faux-conspiracy theory suggesting that birds no longer exist and were replaced by bird-like government drones to spy on citizens.

The Enron brand appeared online again in December, 23 years after the energy company filed for bankruptcy. Its new website describes the company as “nice” and “repentant” and includes a video of Gaydos introducing himself as CEO.

Its use of parody is spelled small. Since terms and conditions state, “The information on the site is First Amendment-protected parody, represents performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only.”

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On December 4, two days after the Enron brand resurfaced, a gunman shot and killed UnitedHealth Care CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan. The shooting sparked a national conversation about health insurance ethics and political violence.

The pie video seems to have showed up about a week later. Several commentators compared the cake incident to the shooting.

“Luigi’s influence is spreading lol,” wrote one commenter under the Facebook post, presumably referring to the suspected shooter, Luigi Mangione.

The setup of supposed Enron pie incident looks a lot like infamous 1998 incident where Gates was hit in the face with a pie. In both cases, the victim was walking from a street onto a sidewalk in a dense urban area when the person with the pie jumps out from behind a pillar.

A company has one pending application to use Enron’s trademark for, among other things, cryptocurrency exchange.

College Company also has one pending application to use the trademark for “educational and entertainment services,” including “an ongoing program about the dangers of corporatism and corporate greed.”

Spokesman Will Chabot told the Washington Post that Enron would have more to share soon. As of December 23, the company’s website featured a live countdown to a January 6 event titled “The Enron Power Summit.”

USA TODAY reached out to the media contact’s email address listed on Enron’s website, but did not immediately receive a response. The account that posted the photo on Facebook did not provide evidence to support the claim when contacted by USA TODAY.

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