Fake News: Man Did NOT Get Plastic Surgery And Name Change to Date Ex-girlfriend After Restraining Order

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Man Did NOT Get Plastic Surgery And Name Change to Date Ex-girlfriend After Restraining Order

Did 40-year-old James Mack from Camden, New Jersey get plastic surgery and a name change in order to keep dating his ex-girlfriend who got a restraining order against him? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that makes a living by publishing fictional stories often involving weird crimes, bizarre sex acts or strange accidents. It is not real.

The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on December 13, 2018 titled "Man gets plastic surgery and name change to date his ex-girlfriend after she obtains restraining order" (archived here) which opened:

A New Jersey man who went to great lengths to try and win back his ex-girlfriend despite a court restraining order was arrested this morning after his plot was discovered.

40-year old James Mack from Camden was condemned to six months in jail in 2017 for criminally harassing his former lover, but the sentence clearly didn't dissuade him.

Being under a restraining order that forbade him from contacting or approaching his ex, he began an extreme transformation in order to do it without getting caught.

He legally changed his name to Jason Monroe, underwent 37 plastic surgeries to change his physical appearance and even had a delicate vocal cords operation to alter his voice.

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

Man gets plastic surgery and name change to date his ex-girlfriend after she obtains restraining order

A New Jersey man who went to great lengths to try and win back his ex-girlfriend despite a court restraining order was arrested this morning after his plot was discovered. 40-year old James Mack from Camden was condemned to six months in jail in 2017 for criminally harassing his former lover, but t

The before/after picture is a digital composite of two unrelated pictures. The man on the right did indeed have plastic surgery to alter his jawline but the change wasn't as drastic as the changes shown in the manipulated photo:

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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.

NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes worldnewsdailyreport.com as:

A website that publishes hoaxes and made-up stories that are often widely shared and mistaken for news.

According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.

We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.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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