A rumor that circulated online in September and October 2025 claimed police arrested a 23-year-old woman working as a Starbucks barista at Portland International Airport in Oregon. According to the story — which featured an alleged mugshot of the barista — the incident occurred Sept. 30 after a family failed to tip her for preparing a large order of lattes and food. Snopes readers searched this website for the truth about this matter.
We concluded one or more users fabricated this false rumor in an attempt to create viral content, as well as potentially to build their Facebook followings and earn revenue.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo located no news media outlets — local to Portland or otherwise — publishing stories about what would be a widely reported incident. An investigation found the purported mugshot dated back to at least May 2023, in Instagram (archived) and X (archived) posts mentioning nothing of a barista or the city of Portland. Further, the Facebook pages posting the rumor displayed other posts telling similar fictional stories of police arresting women in their 20s working in the service industry, including for seeking revenge on customers not providing worthy tips. Those similar stories featured mugshot pictures unrelated to tipping disputes, as well as some mugshot photos users generated with artificial-intelligence tools…