The FBI’s latest fraud is a music video.
FBI Director Kash Patel is facing allegations that he used artificial intelligence to rip off the Beastie Boys’ iconic 1994 ‘Sabotage’ music video for a federal promotional clip.
The roughly two-minute video, posted Monday on X to tout the FBI’s fight against “massive fraud,” features the instrumental version of the track and at least six shots that are near-identical recreations of Spike Jonze’s original direction.
With President Trump’s leadership, this @FBI and our interagency partners are conducting massive fraud takedowns coast to coast – and we’re not stopping pic.twitter.com/lLAY4nSsQa
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) May 4, 2026
Experts who reviewed the footage for NPR cited telltale AI flaws: a shrunken driver’s arm, a traffic light showing red and green simultaneously, and a telephone line piercing a character’s head.
“The similarities are hard to explain otherwise,” said UC Berkeley digital forensics professor Hany Farid.
The original ‘Sabotage’ video showed detectives in wigs and sunglasses; the FBI’s version swaps in agents.
Patel, a Long Island native who would have been a teen when the song dropped, has not responded to requests for comment.
Neither have the Beastie Boys. The video had racked up half a million views by Tuesday.
