Fake News: Man Did NOT Find 2 Million Dollars In Brownsville Brooklyn

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Prank website Trend News was used by somebody to publish an article titled "Man finds 2 Million dollars in Brownsville Brooklyn" (archived here). The text of the prank ran:

A man known as Vybe wooden has found two 2 million dollars in a suitcase in Brownsville police are investigating to see if this money came from a robbery gone bad Vybe wooden was awarded 5 hundred thousand dollars from the city as a finders fee it's not known if Vybe Wooden found more then what he turned in this case is still being investigated

(bad spelling, grammar and punctuation left intact)

There is a user named "Vybe Wooden" on instagram and he resembles the person in the picture that went with the story (which was tilted sideways). Also the subway map visible in the picture looks like it is indeed from Brooklyn.

tilted.jpg

But if the shabby writing and the oddly tilted picture don't convince you the story is fake then maybe the disclaimer at the bottom of the page will:

ABOUT
This website is an entertainment website, news are created by users. These are humourous news, fantasy, fictional, that should not be seriously taken or as a source of information.

Yet despite all this the story has racked up at least 2000 likes/shares/comments on Facebook in a few hours. Weird.

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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