Satire: Lottery Winner NOT Arrested For Dumping $200,000 of Manure On Ex-boss' Lawn

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Satire: Lottery Winner NOT Arrested For Dumping $200,000 of Manure On Ex-boss' Lawn

Was 54-year-old lottery winner Brian Morris from Clarendon Hills, Dupage County arrested for dumping $200,000 worth of manure on the lawn of his former boss? No, that's not true: the story about the lucky lotto player pulling a shitty prank was completely made up by a website that creates fake stories for entertainment purposes. It did not happen for real.

The manure story appeared in an article published on May 14, 2018 by World News Daily Report that was titled "Lottery winner arrested for dumping $200,000 of manure on ex-boss' lawn" (archived here) and which opened:

A man from Illinois was arrested for getting $224,000 worth of manure dumped on his former employer's property, only two weeks after he won $125 million at the lottery and quit his job.
54-year old Brian Morris, from the small town of Clarendon Hills in Dupage County, bought over 20,000 tons of manure and asked for it to be dumped on his former boss' property, pretending it was his residence.

Dozens of trucks filled with manure showed up in front of the house around 6:00 this morning and began dumping their smelly cargo over the property's lawn.

George Fitzgerald, Mr. Morris' former employer, was awakened by the sound of the vehicles on his property and rapidly called the police.

Some people might mistake the social media summary of the article for real news (or they may have seen a copied version somewhere else that led them to believe it was real):

Lottery winner arrested for dumping $200,000 of manure on ex-boss' lawn

A man from Illinois was arrested for getting $224,000 worth of manure dumped on his former employer's property, only two weeks after he won $125 million at the lottery and quit his job. 54-year old Brian Morris, from the small town of Clarendon Hills in Dupage County, bought over 20,000 tons of man

But the man happily grinning in the picture illustrating the story is not Brian Morris but Ronald R. Searle who was arrested in 2014 for DUI:

Westmont village manager charged with DUI: cops

The village manager for west suburban Westmont was charged with driving under the influence after he was pulled over while driving in a center turn lane in a neighboring town, police said today. Ronald R.

The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:

World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.

On March 20, 2019 the site added a new header that included the slogan "Where facts don't matter" to make it clearer to casual visitors the published content is fictional:

factsdontmatter3.png

It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.

Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.

We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

Updates:

  • 2019-03-21T01:42:11Z 2019-03-21T01:42:11Z
    Story updated with info about new banner added by the site.

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  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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