Fake News: Cardi B NOT Dead, Nicki Minaj Did NOT Shoot Her Outside LA Cafe

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Cardi B NOT Dead, Nicki Minaj Did NOT Shoot Her Outside LA Cafe

Was singer Cardi B shot dead by Nicki Minaj outside a cafe in Los Angeles? No, that's not true: a fake story making that claim briefly went viral after some joker posted it to a prank website that uses a domain name meant to confuse people into thinking it is CBS News. It is not real.

The story originated from an article published by cbsnews.us (not cbsnews.com) on September 9, 2018 titled "Cardi B dead after nicki Minaj shoots her outside LA cafe" (archived here) which opened:

Cardi b is pronounced dead after former rap artist shoots her 4 times and kills cardi in from of many people outside LA cafe

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

Cardi B dead after nicki Minaj shoots her outside LA cafe

Cardi b is pronounced dead after former rap artist shoots her 4 times and kills cardi in from of many people outside LA cafe

No actual news outlets are reporting on the shooting.

The site is part of a network of prank websites centered around thefakenewsgenerator.com that allow anyone to create a realistic looking fake news article. The network offers a selection of misleading domain names that can be used to make it look like an article came from real news websites such as CBS News, Associated Press or The New York Times. Each hoax article comes with following disclaimer at the top of the page:

You clicked this fake news story. Now make your own!

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

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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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