The ‘Laser Beam Before the Venezuela Quake’ Video Is Months Older

What happened

On the evening of 24 June 2026, two large earthquakes struck northern Venezuela about half a minute apart. Four days later, on 28 June, the X account @369Jessica369 posted a video of pink beams of light sweeping a night sky above a city. The post was captioned in Chinese. Lead Stories quotes X’s automatic translation: “An instant before the Venezuela earthquake struck, multiple laser beams scanned the ground below.” The video was dressed up as a breaking-news broadcast with an “Última hora” chyron.

On 29 June, Lead Stories (reporter Sarah Thompson) rated the claim false. The opening clip had been on TikTok since 18 March.

The footage

The original is embedded below. It was posted on TikTok by @archive.available on 18 March 2026. It is 15 seconds long and captioned: “Multiple beams converging across the cloud layer tonight. CASE 058 logged. Has anyone seen something like this before? #ufo #uap #unexplained #caughtoncamera #strangesky.”

Lead Stories describes how the copies relate:

• The X version is a 1 min 7 s montage of several clips under the “Última hora” breaking-news graphic.
• Its opening scene is the TikTok “CASE 058 Converging Beam Event” clip, flipped horizontally.
• The TikTok original has no AI or CGI disclaimer and is pinned at the top of the account.
• Copies on Instagram and YouTube were matched to it through reverse image search and text searches.

Timeline

• 11 February 2026: @archive.available begins posting its run of pink-laser night-sky videos, according to Lead Stories.
• 18 March 2026: “CASE 058” is posted, 15 seconds long.
• 24 June 2026, 22:04 UTC: A magnitude 7.2 earthquake strikes 20 km east of San Felipe, Yaracuy, according to the USGS catalogue.
• 24 June 2026, 22:05 UTC: A magnitude 7.5 earthquake follows about 30 seconds later. Local time is 6:04–6:05 pm.
• 24 June 2026, 6:52 pm: Sunset in Caracas, per timeanddate.com as cited by Lead Stories. That is about 47 minutes after the quakes.
• 28 June 2026: @369Jessica369 posts the montage on X.
• 29 June 2026: Lead Stories publishes its fact check.
• 28 July 2026: El Diario reports that USGS has moved the M7.5 epicentre to about 17 km west of Catia La Mar, La Guaira.

What believers claim

The post presents the beams as a weapon, or an energy signature, caught “an instant before” the quakes. It implies the disaster was triggered on purpose. The breaking-news graphic makes it look like broadcast footage from the day.

What the research found

1. The clip is three months older than the quake. The TikTok original was posted on 18 March 2026, 98 days before the 24 June earthquakes. A video can’t record “the instant before” an event that hadn’t happened yet.