Fake News: Bloomington Police Did NOT Discover Over 200 Penises During Raid At Funeral Employee's Home

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Bloomington Police Did NOT Discover Over 200 Penises During Raid At Funeral Employee's Home

Did the cops find over 200 penises during a raid at the home of 54-year-old Paul Houston, an employee of the McLean County Coroner's Office? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a fake news website imitating the look and feel of Fox News by using their logo and a similar domain name. It is not real.

The story originated from an article published by foxnews-us.com (not foxnews.com) on August 22, 2018 titled "BLOOMINGTON POLICE DISCOVER OVER 200 PENISES DURING RAID AT FUNERAL EMPLOYEE'S HOME" (archived here) which opened:

Police made an astonishing discovery this morning while executing a search warrant at the residence of a Bloomington mortician: 218 embalmed human penises.

Authorites suspected 54-year old Paul Houston, an employee of the McLean County Coroner's Office, of being implicated in an organ trafficking network.

Investigating several reports of missing organs and body parts, dozens of police raided his residence this Monday morning, hoping to find evidence of his involvement in the crimes.

What they found on the site was a lot more disturbing than what they expected, as the Police spokesman Andy Ramirez described the scene in an interview with WMBD.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail where they may have mistaken it for an actual Fox News story:

BLOOMINGTON POLICE DISCOVER OVER 200 PENISES DURING RAID AT FUNERAL EMPLOYEE'S HOME

Police made an astonishing discovery this morning while executing a search warrant at the residence of a Bloomington mortician: 218 embalmed human penises. Authorites suspected 54-year old Paul Houston, an employee of...

But most of the story was copied from an older hoax first published on World News Daily Report last year:

Fake News: FBI Did NOT Seize Over 3,000 Penises During Raid At Morgue Employee Home | Lead Stories

Hoax Alert An article appeared on fake news website World News Daily report which claimed in the title that the "FBI seizes over 3,000 penises during raid at morgue employee's home". The story opened: FBI agents made an astonishing discovery this morning while executing a search warrant at the residence of a Houston mortician: 3,178 embalmed human penises.

And the picture illustrating the story has been circulating online in various galleries of funny mugshots since at least 2010:

20 results - TinEye

Compare your search image to your result image. Quickly click the "Switch" button to switch back and forth between the two images and see the differences.

We wrote about foxnews-us.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention 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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