Claim:
Videos posted online in December 2025 depicted a real moment in which Judge Frank Caprio, famous for judging cases in the “Caught in Providence” television show, shut down a CEO’s daughter.
Rating:
In December 2025, Snopes readers sent us mail asking about a video apparently of Judge Frank Caprio, a Providence, Rhode Island-based, judge famous for his court cases that aired on the television show “Caught in Providence,” “shutting down” a CEO’s daughter in court.
The reader linked to a three-minute long YouTube video (archived) of a woman in a court room making a rude gesture, followed by Caprio speaking from the judge’s seat. The video was also popular on TikTok (archived).
According to the video, Caprio supposedly heard the case in late-2024, in which a 23-year-old woman, Madison Thornton, daughter of Robert Thornton, CEO of a Rhode Island real estate business Thornton Industries, was accused of reckless driving in a residential area of Providence. She allegedly showed “no remorse” and threatened the police officer who pulled her over.
The court case, including the people within it, was fake and the video itself was generated with artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
The video sent by the Snopes reader and shared on TikTok was cut from a much longer one (archived) posted to YouTube in November 2025. Based on the comment section of that longer video, which was viewed over 1 million times, many viewers believed that it, too, was real. However, the video’s description warned, “Portions of this content have been enhanced or created using AI technology to honor and showcase the remarkable spirit of Judge Caprio’s work.” However, the only part of the video that did not appear AI-generated was a still photo, which appeared to be the image the video portion was based on, that remained on screen from about 4:12 to the end.
There was plenty of evidence the case was fake and the video, including script and audio, was AI-generated just within the shorter version sent to us by the Snopes reader alone.
From the very beginning, Caprio’s nameplate was garbled to the point of illegibility. Many AI tools, particularly older ones, struggle to correctly generate text in images and videos.
When AI-Caprio began to describe the “facts” of the case, he started with establishing a timeline. The reckless driving incident occurred in August 2024, three months prior to the supposed court case. The problem with that is Caprio retired in January 2023, nearly two years before the court case was supposed to have happened.
And the “facts” continued to unravel from there. The AI-generated judge began describing Thornton’s biographical information next. He claimed that she lived on 1847 Blackstone Boulevard, but that address doesn’t exist. While that is a real road in Providence, its addresses range from 8 to 767 Blackstone Boulevard.
The video said Thornton’s father was the CEO of Thornton Industries, supposedly one of the largest real estate development companies in Rhode Island. But Snopes could find only two Thornton Industries in the country, neither of which was based in Rhode Island or related to real estate. One was a manufacturing company in Pennsylvania, while the other was a Texas company that specialized in doors.
While people named Madison and Robert Thornton do exist, Snopes could find no evidence either of these particular Thorntons exist.
The AI-generated Caprio then described the location of Madison Thornton’s driving incident. Thornton apparently sped through Providence’s Elmwood neighborhood on Cranston Street between Haskins Avenue and Broad Street.
Those locations almost work.
By combing through Providence on Google Maps, Snopes was able to find Cranston Street, Broad Street and Elmwood. Broad Street is even one of the borders of Elmwood, which has a triangle-shaped cemetery at its most northern point. However, there was a Haskins Street instead of Haskins Avenue, and Cranston never intersects with Haskins or Broad, even though they’re nearby. In fact, Haskins Avenue and Broad Street intersect each other. There is no street between them. Below is a screenshot from Google Maps highlighting the three streets and neighborhood.
Cranston Street, Broad Street, and Haskins Street are all just south of Downtown Providence. Elmwood begins where Broad Street splits from U.S. Route 1 and continues south. (Google Maps)
Closer to the end of the video, beginning at around 2:53, the AI-generated Caprio began reading verbatim from the police report without looking down at any papers or holding up any papers in front of his face. Caprio was rigid throughout the video and barely moved at all except for moving his mouth to talk and bobbing his head some as he talked. That hints at the video possibly being a deepfake.
For further reading, Snopes has previously fact-checked many other examples of AI-generated content.
