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:
