Was 58-year-old Robert Casgrain suspected of fathering over 20,000 children by officials at the Toronto sperm bank where he worked as a janitor for over 20 years? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian website that specializes in making up stories about bizarre crimes and weird sex acts (purely for entertainment purposes). None of it is real
The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on September 27, 2018 titled "Janitor who worked at sperm bank suspected of fathering 20,000 children over 20 year period" (archived here) which opened:
Toronto police have opened an official investigation after the administrators of a Canadian sperm bank have accused a former employee of replacing hundreds of sperm donors' specimens with his own.
Robert Casgrain, 58, who has worked as a janitor at the Toronto-based fertility clinic since 1996, is suspected by administrators of switching hundreds of semen specimens with his own sperm over a 20 year period.
Administrators claim in the official police report that they estimate Casgrain could potentially be the father to over 22,000 children over a period stretching two decades.
Although Robert Casgrain's motives for replacing the sperm donors' samples with his own are not clear at the moment, legal experts believe these revelations could unleash a potential class-action lawsuit against the former janitor.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so it looked like a real news report to them:
Janitor who worked at sperm bank suspected of fathering 20,000 children over 20 year period
Toronto police have opened an official investigation after the administrators of a Canadian sperm bank have accused a former employee of replacing hundreds of sperm donors' specimens with his own. Robert Casgrain, 58, who has worked as a janitor at the Toronto-based fertility clinic since 1996, is
The man in the picture is not a janitor at a sperm bank an dnis name is not Robert Casgrain but Timothy Poole and he has quite a different claim to fame:
Convicted sex offender wins $3 million lottery
A convicted sex offender won a multi-million dollar jackpot from the Florida Lottery over the past weekend. Timothy Poole, 43, of Mount Dora, Florida won $3 million from a scratch-off ticket he purchased at a 7-Eleven over the weekend, according to the New York Daily News.
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.
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:
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- Fake News: Priest Did NOT Suck Venom Out of Genitals, Choir Boy Did NOT Get Snake Bite
- Fake News: Woman Did NOT Sue Samsung For $1.8M, Cell Phone NOT Stuck Inside Her Vagina
- Fake News: Man With Rare Medical Condition Did NOT Ejaculate First Time At Age 79 After Surgery
- Fake News: 400-pound Woman Did NOT Sue NC Zoo After Escaped Hippo Tried To Rape Her During Hurricane Florence