In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing , Tripathi was one of several people misidentified as a suspect by users on social media . On April 16 , 2013 , one day after the bombings , a Redditor with the username " OOPS777 " created a subreddit with the intention of consolidating the information surrounding the events of the bombings in an attempt to identify the culprits of the attack . By Wednesday , April 17 , over 3000 people had joined the subreddit in order to crowdsource the investigation of the evidence . At 5:00 p.m. on April 18 , the Federal Bureau of Investigation 's published photos of the suspects believed to be involved in the bombings . Soon after , another redditor named Sunil as a plausible suspect after asserting a resemblance between the suspects in the FBI 's pictures and Sunil , who had gone missing a month before the bombings . Although this behavior violated the subreddit 's rule that prohibited naming suspects without evidence , the moderators did not delete the post because they were inexperienced and struggling to cope with the influx of posts on the thread . To further the speculation behind Tripathi , a woman claiming to be his classmate tweeted that she too thought Tripathi represented a suspect in the FBI 's photographs
Boston Marathon bombing
Boston Marathon bombing
Sunil Tripathi