Tyler Oliveira

Oliveira first went viral in 2018 through a collaboration with YouTuber MrBeastMrBeastMrBeast, born James Stephen Donaldson and commonly known as Jimmy Donaldson, is an American video creator, television producer and entrepreneur. He began running a YouTube channel in 2012, later founded Beast Industries and the snack brand Feastables, and launched several charitable fundraising campaigns. In June 2026, his main channel became the first individual creator’s YouTube channel to reach 500 million subscribers.Open the full entry, and went on to build a following with stunt and challenge videos.⁠[1]

In January 2020 Oliveira, who had more than 590,000 subscribers, posted the video “Can 1,000,000 Paper Towels Absorb A Swimming Pool?”, first placing individual sheets and then whole rolls in a pool. After a few hours the water level had dropped “just an inch, if that”; he then discarded the remaining towels and tried to set them off with a firework.⁠[2]

Viewers condemned the video as wasteful and environmentally harmful. Days later he said “this video was a really bad idea” and “I deserve the criticism on this one!”, and donated $1,000 to the Australian Red Cross to support teams fighting bushfires in New South Wales.⁠[2]

In November 2023 Oliveira released a video discussing British Columbia’s decriminalization of drugs. Elenore Sturko, a provincial legislator who appeared in it, said she had not agreed to appear and called the video inaccurate and exploitative.⁠[3]

On September 10, 2024, Oliveira released a video filmed in Springfield, Ohio, in which an unnamed resident claimed to have seen Haitian immigrants carrying away “over a hundred cats” in a white van. Springfield police had no records substantiating the claim, which the video did not mention. The video had more than 4.5 million views on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry.⁠[4]

The video’s cover image showed a Haitian man who appeared to be holding a cat, but the image was an edited frame and the man never held a cat. The video also placed a clip of local Haitian community leader Viles Dorsainvil driving among car-crash footage; Dorsainvil said the clip had been online before the video was published and that he was not in any of the accidents shown. In a comment Oliveira said the video was “entirely demonetized” and linked to his Patreon account; he did not respond to NPR’s interview request.⁠[4]

In 2026 Oliveira released two videos claiming to expose welfare fraud in Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic village in New York, and Lakewood, a heavily Orthodox Jewish town in New Jersey; together they ran about two hours and mixed street interviews, interviews with local activists and his own narration. He called Kiryas Joel “the New York town invaded by welfare-addicted Jews” and suggested that Orthodox Jews there were committing welfare fraud, while also acknowledging that they qualified for Medicaid and food stamps and arguing that taxpayers should not fund those programs.⁠[5][1]

Each video drew more than 9 million views, and Jewish leaders accused him of trafficking in antisemitic stereotypes. Patreon subsequently removed his account.⁠[6][1]

On May 8, 2026, Oliveira was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. On the show he said the “entire lifestyle” of Jews in Orthodox towns “is designed to extract and exploit these welfare systems.”⁠[6][1]

On May 11, 2026, Oliveira was stopped at Ben Gurion Airport and deported to the United States. Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli confirmed the decision, saying he had come with the “aim of spreading hatred”; the ministry’s statement said his activity “goes beyond legitimate freedom of expression” and included “inciting statements against Jews.”⁠[1][6]

In September 2026 Oliveira, then 26, released the 55-minute video “I Exposed a Jewish Fraud Ring Stealing From Poor Kids”, centered on E-Rate, the U.S. federal program that subsidizes internet services for schools and libraries, and opening in New Square, a Hasidic village in Rockland County, New York. Within two days it had about 6.3 million views on X and 2.3 million on YouTube.⁠[7]

The video cited earlier cases: an Orthodox school consultant pleaded guilty in January 2026, and seven Orthodox defendants pleaded guilty in 2018 in a $14 million fraud involving the program. He made new allegations that 10 companies served 77 Jewish institutions and that 93.7 percent of 633 bidding processes drew a single bid or none, and asked authorities to freeze $5.7 million in pending funds and open an investigation. In the video he also acknowledged that, apart from the earlier cases, none of the people, schools or companies in the new allegations had been charged, and that a high price or a single bidder does not by itself prove fraud.⁠[7]

Oliveira’s YouTube channel is @TylerOliveira. In recent years it has shifted to “investigations”, with exposé-style videos filmed in communities from Thailand to Flint, Michigan. In September 2026 the channel had nearly 9.7 million subscribers.⁠[8][1][7]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TylerOliveira (opens in a new window).⁠[8]