Fake News: SeaWorld Employee NOT Arrested For Smuggling Penguin Penises To China

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: SeaWorld Employee NOT Arrested For Smuggling Penguin Penises To China

Was 27-year old Sea World employee Thomas C. Frampton arrested in San Diego for smuggling over 12,500 penguin penises to China? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a website that specializes in inventing tales about bizarre crimes and weird sex acts, purely for entertainment. It is not true and did not happen.

The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on June 22, 2018 titled "SeaWorld employee arrested for smuggling penguin penises to China" (archived here) which opened:

An employee of the SeaWorld theme park in San Diego was arrested this morning for running a smuggling ring specialized in a very unusual product: penguin genitals.
27-year old Thomas C. Frampton was arrested by the FBI as he arrived at work at the marine park this morning.

The veterinarian, specialized in aquatic birds, is accused of "illegally collecting and trafficking animal organs" and is suspected of exporting over 12,500 bird penises to China over the last 2 years.

Users on social media who only saw this title, description and thumbnail might have mistaken the story for a real news article:

SeaWorld employee arrested for smuggling penguin penises to China

An employee of the SeaWorld theme park in San Diego was arrested this morning for running a smuggling ring specialized in a very unusual product: penguin genitals. 27-year old Thomas C. Frampton was arrested by the FBI as he arrived at work at the marine park this morning. The veterinarian, spec

The picture illustrating the story has been floating around the internet since at least 2014 when it was used in advertising for an arrest record service:

Instant Checkmate | Truth In Advertising

Instant Checkmate advertises its "new controversial" website as a way for "anyone with a computer" to view arrest records and perform background checks on friends and family. But can they really deliver that? Here's the web ad we saw: We're not in Cheshire, but the ad thinks we are.

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.

We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.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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