Fake News: NO Florida Nursing Home Shut Down by FDA for Feeding Elders With Dog Food

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Fake News: NO Florida Nursing Home Shut Down by FDA for Feeding Elders With Dog Food

Did the FDA shut down a nursing home in Fort Myers, Florida for feeding old people expired dog food? 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 on February 7, 2019 titled "Florida nursing home shut down by FDA for feeding elders with dog food" (archived here) which opened:

A Florida nursing home has been shut down after the Food and Drug Administration found no less than 2,5 tons of expired animal food during an inspection of the facility.
Fort Myers police seized over one hundred and twenty 52-lb bags of dog food in the basement of the Mariposa Nursing Center after families of the residents raised a number of complaints which led to an official FDA investigation this week.

Many residents reported a number of gastrointestinal symptoms such as severe digestive problems, chronic flatulence, frequent vomiting, nausea, and diarrhea.

"We believe residents of the Mariposa Nursing Center were fed large quantities of dog food which were blended into the actual food and made more palatable with salt and sugar," Fort Myers Police Officer Ray Johnson said.

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

Florida nursing home shut down by FDA for feeding elders with dog food

A Florida nursing home has been shut down after the Food and Drug Administration found no less than 2,5 tons of expired animal food during an inspection of the facility. Fort Myers police seized over one hundred and twenty 52-lb bags of dog food in the basement of the Mariposa Nursing Center after

But there is no "Mariposa Nursing Center" in Fort Myers. And the story is illustrated with a picture of the Fort Myers chief of police (Hilton Daniels) but it was taken as far back as 2006 when it showed up in a news article:

Police: Baby Bryan kidnapping motive is smuggling ransom

Fort Myers Police chief Hilton Daniels held a press conference Saturday afternoon announcing that baby Bryan was kidnapped by a human trafficking organization over payment for smuggling the parents into the United States from Brazil. When the parents could not come up with rest of the money, the baby was taken as a means to force payment.

The current chief of police is Derrick Digs according to the department website:

Chief of Police | Fort Myers Florida Police Department

It is my honor to provide leadership to the men and women of this outstanding police department. The agency consistently demonstrates extraordinary commitment to serving and protecting the citizens of our City, day and night. They work tirelessly to build strong partnerships with our residents, business owners, community leaders and visitors.

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.

On March 20, 2019 the site added a new header that included the slogan "Where facts don't matter" to make it clearer to casual visitors the published content is fictional:

factsdontmatter3.png

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:

Updates:

  • 2019-03-21T01:53:37Z 2019-03-21T01:53:37Z
    Added info about new site header.

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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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