Did Big AJ get arrested? Costco Guys boom airplane skit triggers arrest rumors

One half of the viral TikToker duo Costco Guys, AJ, was seen getting arrested while traveling in an airplane, sparking concerns from fans online. In a video that has been circulating widely on the internet, AJ and his son Big Justice performed their signature ‘boom’ action on an airplane that seemed to be headed for Hawaii.

However, AJ was not arrested. The video, which prompted concerns among fans, was staged. The influencers posted another skit to their social media pages, which continued the airplane arrest joke, showing them on a set resembling a jail cell. According to a piece by Business Insider, influencers and social media stars often hire sets that resemble the inside of an airplane to construct narratives that are designed to go viral.

As per the publication, the airplane sets have certain telltale signs that indicate that a video is staged.

In the video which led to speculations about AJ’s arrest, the Costco Guys encountered fellow influencer David Dobrik on a plane, and excitedly decided to perform 5 big ‘booms’ for him.

However, the action led to passengers around the influencers getting perturbed and panicked. Soon, two federal agents, who were dressed in a uniform akin to that of the SWAT, came and grabbed AJ, prompting fear among fans that the influencer had been arrested.

Who are the Costco Guys?

The Costco Guys are composed of the iconic father-son duo of A.J. Befumo and his son, Eric Justice Befumo, who is more famously known as Big Justice. The elder Befumo was a professional wrestler in the 1990s, who eventually became a mortgage lender, as per Mashed.

The Costco Guys’ viral TikTok channel was first created when Befumo decided to promote his mortgage lending business online. However, one video posted in 2022 which featured an appearance by his son, Eric, led to a surge in the channel’s viewership. The sudden increase in their follower count prompted the father-son pair to begin creating content together, according to Mashed.

Recounting how the duo got their start on TikTok, Big Justice told Tubefilter in 2024:

“[AJ] was in the home mortgage business, so we started making videos for that. Then I asked him, ‘Can I be in a video?’ I think that we were at the table. He tried a burger, and I was introducing him, and he got millions of views. He was used to getting 10 views…He was like, ‘All right. This isn’t my work channel anymore. This is our channel.’”

After around a year of creating content together, AJ and Big Justice achieved influencer status when a video of their visit to Costco went viral, getting around 10 million views. Reflecting on the moment when the Costco Guys moniker was created during his conversation with Tubefilter, Big Justice remarked:

“We had about 13,000 followers. Then, my mom wants meatballs for her birthday. We go to Costco. We said, ‘Oh, let’s record. Let’s go to Costco.’ It gets 10 million views. We had over 10,000 followers the next day. Then, I don’t know, we made the idea that’s like, ‘Let’s do, we’re Costco guys.’ Then we did the whole script. We got it all ready and now we’re the Costco guys.”

The ‘boom’ action that the Costco Guys perform is an extension of their "Boom or Doom" videos, in which they rate items, notes Mashed.

According to an interview of the Costco Guys with Rolling Stone, they refused to clarify if they had a financial relationship with the Costco chain, but AJ did note that the chain was on “ very good terms” with them.