Fake News: Man Did NOT Snort 10 Lines of Cocaine During Countdown To New Year, Did NOT End Up In Hospital

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Man Did NOT Snort 10 Lines of Cocaine During Countdown To New Year, Did NOT End Up In Hospital

Did a man snort ten lines of cocaine during the countdown towards 2019 and was he subsequently taken to hospital with an overdose? No, that's not true: it did not happen in New York and it didn't happen in Santander, Spain either. The story was made up by a Spanish entertainment website and copied for the English version of the site. It is not real.

The story went viral in English via an article published by There Is News on January 1, 2019 titled "Snort 10 lines of cocaine during the new year's countdown and goes to the hospital" (archived here) which opened:

A young man goes to the hospital yesterday in New York after snorting 10 lines of cocaine during the New Year's countdown. A terrible act of immaturity that could have been fatal for him.

It happens at his home in Brooklyn, when A.M.J, 27 years old, was enjoying in a party with his friends and with all kind of drugs and alcohol. So, he think snorting 10 lines, one for each countdown number, was a great idea and decided to work about it. "This is going to be amazing, what could go wrong?", were his last words.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so they would not have been aware this wasn't from a real news website (except for the terrible English):

Snort 10 lines of cocaine during the new year's countdown and goes to the hospital

A young man goes to the hospital yesterday in New York after snorting 10 lines of cocaine during the New Year's countdown. A terrible act of immaturity that could have been fatal for him. It happens at his home in Brooklyn, when A.M.J, 27 years old, was enjoying in a party with his friends and with all kind of drugs

However A.M.J. also seems to live in Santander in Spain according to this article in Spanish:

Se mete una raya de coca por cada campanada y acaba en urgencias

Un joven tuvo que ser ingresado de urgencia ayer en Santander después de meterse 12 rayas de cocaína seguidas durante las campanadas de Nochevieja. Un acto de inmadurez, el de sustituir las uvas por cocaína, que pudo costarle muy cara a su salud.

If you look closely the site There Is News carries a "Legal Warging" (archived here) that reads:

Legal Warging

The site "There is news" (http://thereisnews.es) (hereinafter referred to as TIN) is a humor site whose purpose is entertainment.

The content of TIN is fiction and does not correspond to reality.

All references, names, brands or institutions that appear on the site are used as contextual elements, as in any novel or fiction account.

(Note that the site thereisnews.es doesn't exist, only the .com version is live)

The site is the English language version of the Spanish satire site Hay Noticia, which is owned by Spanish humor website/collective La Fabrica de la Comedia S.C.

We wrote about thereisnews.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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