Mamdani discount grocery store meme shows unrelated photo, false claim about family

Claim: A meme authentically shows a photo of one of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's discount grocery stores and reveals a scam alleging his extended family both sold and then bought back the property to financially profit. In July 2026, people shared a meme image allegedly showing a photo of a building New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani selected for his city-owned discount grocery store plan. The text of the meme purportedly exposed a scam about his extended family both selling and then buying back the property for financial profit. The meme read as follows: This is one of Mamdani's "discount grocery stores." It cost the city $1.2 million to buy and another $1.7 million will go to renovate. Mamdani's cousin Elijoe al Barroni sold the property. His older brother Ezekiel got the contract to gut it and renovate. But sure. Tell us all about how much money the people will save. For example, on July 29, an X user posted (archived) the meme with a text caption reading in part, "The communist family business is thriving." (@mcafeenew accessed via X) Other users shared the meme on Facebook (archived) and X (archived). To investigate the rumor's legitimacy, we first used search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google. If the photo pertained to Mamdani and the story about his family truly happened, journalists with reputable national news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, or New York-based journalists would have widely reported on it. Those search inquiries would have uncovered such evidence. That was not the case. We did not find any credible reporting confirming the pictured grocery store was one of the sites Mamdani selected for his city-owned discount grocery store plan, nor any information about a cousin named Elijoe al Barroni. We identified the rumor's original source: America Loves Liberty, a Facebook page (archived) under the umbrella of the America's Last Line of Defense network. America's Last Line of Defense has historically described the network's content as "parody, satire and tomfoolery." The America Loves Liberty Facebook page's bio reads, "An authorized dumping ground for certified AI-free trollery and right-wing propaganda courtesy of America's Last Line of Defense. Nothing on this page is real." Original post The meme, posted (archived) on the page on July 28, featured a text caption with the words, "It's all a scam to make the people in power wealthier. Just like it always is with communists." (America Loves Liberty accessed via Facebook) That original post featured the same words from the page's bio with a watermark the lower left corner of the image that read, "Nothing on this page is real." One or more users removed that disclaimer before reposting the meme, for example in the X post (archived) appearing earlier in this article. 'Elijoe al Barroni' Past Snopes investigations found "Elijoe al Barroni" is a fake name playing on "Joe Barron" — a made-up name featured in at least hundreds of past satire-labeled stories America's Last Line of Defense has posted. For example, the name "Joe Barron" previously appeared in one satire-labeled story working as the "Netflix Director of Democrat Propaganda." Abandoned grocery store photo A reverse image search for the photo appearing in the Mamdani meme found a Reddit post (archived) from 2024 alleging the abandoned grocery store was in Connecticut, not New York. A Flickr photo (archived) with a 2021 capture date showed the same abandoned store, as did a Facebook post (archived) from 2024 that also mentioned Connecticut. (SorrowCat14 accessed via Reddit) For further reading, we previously reported the facts about 10 Mamdani-related rumors. Since the effectiveness of satire is subjective, we use the "originated as satire" or "labeled satire" fact-check ratings based on creators' descriptions of their work.