Was American basketball player Brittney Griner being investigated for "gambling on her own games", as of April 2025? No, that's not true: The claim originated from a network with a satire label. It has a long history of publishing made-up stories.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X where it was published on May 1, 2025. It opened:
🔥🚨BREAKING WNBA star Britney Griner is back in hot water after she was caught gambling on her own games which could lead to her being banned from the WNBA from life.'
'We're looking into whether or not she purposely fixed the scores,' said League Ethics Manager Josephine Barron, 'We may have a Pete Rose situation where she ends up banned for life.'
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
The attached video showed the athlete at what looked like a basketball court and did not offer proof for the claim in question.
A search across Google News for the keywords seen here showed no credible reporting corroborating the speculation:
(Source: Google News screenshot by Lead Stories)
The story originated (archived here) from Dunning-Kruger-Times.com where it was published on April 30, 2025 (archived here).
The site is part of the network of satire websites named "America's Last Line of Defense" run by self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair from Maine along with a loose confederation of friends and allies. He runs several websites and Facebook pages with visible satire disclaimers everywhere. They mostly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Every site in the network has an About page that in part reads (archived here):
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who omit the satire disclaimer and other hints the stories are fake. One of the most persistent networks of such sites is run by a man from Pakistan named Kashif Shahzad Khokhar (aka "DashiKashi") who has spammed hundreds of such stolen stories into conservative and right-wing Facebook pages in order to profit from the ad revenue.
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Other Lead Stories articles concerning claims coming from self-described satire websites can be found here.
