Did 73-year old Arnold White from El Paso, Texas get arrested by the FBI for dressing up as an alien and kidnapping 79 people to anally probe them? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that publishes fictional stories, often about bizarre crimes or weird sex acts, purely for entertainment purposes. It did not happen for real.
The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on December 3, 2018 titled "Texas man admits kinapping 79 people to anally probe them while disguised as an alien" (archived here) which opened:
El Paso, Texas | A man who was arrested by the FBI Yesterday has confessed to kidnapping and sexually assaulting several dozen people while using costumes, drugs, and special effects to have his victims believe they had been abducted by aliens.
73-year old Arnold White was arrested after a joint investigation led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the El Paso Sheriff's Office and the El Paso Police Department.
Originally interrogated about 4 crimes committed in the region in the 1990s, the retired trucker confessed a total of 79 kidnappings across California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas over a period of 40 years.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so it wouldn't have been obvious this was an entertainment website:
Texas man admits kinapping 79 people to anally probe them while disguised as an alien
El Paso, Texas | A man who was arrested by the FBI Yesterday has confessed to kidnapping and sexually assaulting several dozen people while using costumes, drugs, and special effects to have his victims believe they had been abducted by aliens. 73-year old Arnold White was arrested after a joint in
The origin of the mugshot is unclear but it already appeared in this 2011 gallery so it has been online for a while:
Mugshot Monday
Offense : Threw A Deadly Missile Into/at Within Occupied Vehicle. Whoa How much is that doggie in the window...? I thought this was a guy with weird hair. Turns out the guy's name is Traci. Bad hair day. Uh scratch that, bad hair year. This 80 year old was arrested for sexual battery.
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:
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Have Woman's Brain Transplanted and Did NOT Have Five Car Crashes in Two Weeks
- Fake News: FBI Raid at NSA Employee's Home Did NOT Reveal Over 16,000,000 'Dick Pics'
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Divorce Caucasian Wife After DNA Test Proves He Is Of 9% African descent
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Lose 200 Pounds in Six Months by Drinking Menstrual Blood
- Fake News: Trans-species Man Did NOT Identifies as Turkey & Does NOT Want to Ban Thanksgiving Day
