Was NFL lawyer Dan Goodes found dead after claiming the Super Bowl is rigged? No, that's not true: an old copy of a fake story published in 2018 went viral again after being posted to several large Facebook groups and pages in 2019 but it is still not true.
The copy of the story was an article published on Fabruary 1, 2018 titled "NFL Lawyer, Who Claimed Super Bowl Is 'Rigged', Found Dead" (archived here) which opened:
An NFL entertainment lawyer, who has worked for the corporation for more than 15 years, has been found dead in New York City hours after telling reporters that Super Bowl LII is "rigged."
Dan Goodes was found dead in his hometown of New York City in what early reports described as an "gangland-style execution", hours after blowing the whistle on the "rigged Super Bowl" backstage at a promotional event in Minneapolis.
Early reports claim the 49-year-old was found shot dead in a 2017 BMW 2 Series, along with one other man, believed to be a close friend.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
NFL Lawyer, Who Claimed Super Bowl Is 'Rigged', Found Dead
An NFL entertainment lawyer, who has worked for the corporation for more than 15 years, has been found dead in New York City hours after telling reporters that Super Bowl LII is "rigged." Dan Goodes was
However the exact same story appeared a month earlier on YourNewsWire and we debunked it here:
Fake News: NO NFL Lawyer Claimed Super Bowl Is 'Rigged', NOT Found Dead | Lead Stories
There is no truth to the story about a supposed NFL lawyer by the name of "Dan Goodes" being found dead in New York City after telling reporters that the upcoming Super Bolw LII was "rigged".
YourNewsWire has published several hoaxes and fake news articles in the past so anything they write or publish should be taken with a large grain of salt. Their Facebook page "The People's Voice" lost its verification checkmark according to a report from MMFA.
The Terms of Use of the site also make it clear they don't really stand behind the accuracy of any of their reporting:
THE PEOPLE'S VOICE, INC. AND/OR ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY, RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, TIMELINESS, AND ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND RELATED GRAPHICS CONTAINED ON THE SITE FOR ANY PURPOSE.
The site was profiled in the Hollywood reporter where it was described as:
Your News Wire, a 3-year-old website of murky facts and slippery spin, is published by Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Sinclair Treadway -- a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016 -- out of an apartment in L.A.'s historic El Royale.
RationalWiki described it as:
YourNewsWire (styled as YourNewsWire.com[1]) is an Los Angeles-based clickbait fake news website known for disseminating conspiracy theories and misleading information, contrary to its claimed motto ("News. Truth. Unfiltered").[1]
A while ago we also reported that YourNewsWire had rebranded itself as NewsPunch by changing its domain name in an apparent effort to evade filtering/blocking. Interestingly enough it seems they deleted this particular story from their site at the time, the link now returns a 403 Forbidden error.
