Fake News: French Actor Samy Naceri NOT Dead From Heart Disease

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

French Actor Samy Naceri, most known from his role in the movie "Taxi", was the victim of a celebrity death hoax earlier today. A site ostensibly named "C. Chivalric" hosted at pro-inside.website/fr/ published an article (archived here) titled "L'acteur français Samy Naceri est mort aujourd'hui à cause d'une maladie cardiaque. Il n'avait que 56 ans et était connu de tous après son rôle dans le film TAXI." (Translation: "French actor Samy Naceri died today due to heart disease. He was only 56 years old and was known to all after his role in the film TAXI."). It opened:

Aujourd'hui, à 12h33, l'acteur français Samy Nancer est mort, il a souffert d'une maladie cardiaque pendant quatre ans et recemment la situation est devenue critique. Il est mort à l'hôpital, les médecins ont tout fait pour le sauver. L'acteur est devenu célèbre après qu-il a joué le role d' un chauffeur de taxi dans le film TAXI.

Or, as Google Translate would say:

Today at 12:33 pm, French actor Samy Nancer died, he suffered from heart disease for four years and recently the situation became critical. He died in the hospital, the doctors did everything to save him. The actor became famous after he played the role of a taxi driver in the movie TAXI.

The hoax spread quickly because the site was using a popup urging visitors to share the hoax on Facebook to be able to see the rest of the page:

naceri.jpg

This seems similar to the Mr. Bean death hoax we covered a while ago which used a similar tactic to spread itself. Although this time it seems the site is operated from Romania instead of the Philippines: if you vary the number after 'id=' in the URL of the article you get a surprising number of articles in Romanian. The domain name appears to have been registered anonymouslly via a Russian domain registrar only a week or so ago. The main page of the website currently seems to redirect to Google.

Meanwhile the actor has already told his Twitter followers that the rumor is false:

Translation: "Yes exactly a false rumour again I'm in great shape in Russia for the presentation of my next short film!"

So if you encounter people on social media spreading this hoax as real, send them over here to learn the truth. Judging by the Trendolizer graph it seems the rumor got quite some traction on Facebook already.

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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