Fake News: Woman Did NOT Sue Samsung For $1.8M, Cell Phone NOT Stuck Inside Her Vagina

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Woman Did NOT Sue Samsung For $1.8M, Cell Phone NOT Stuck Inside Her Vagina

Did a woman named Salma Briant from Albuquerque sue Samsung after her phone got stuck in her lady parts when she tried to pleasure herself with the vibration mode? No, that's not true: the tale was made up by a Canadian website that specializes in inventing tales about bizarre crimes and weird sex acts for entertainment purposes. The story is not real although it is likely it will be copied by other websites eventually.

The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on September 20, 2018 titled "Woman sues Samsung for $1.8M after cell phone gets stuck inside her vagina" (archived here) which opened:

An Albuquerque woman is suing Samsung for $1.8 million after she necessitated medical attention after inserting her cell phone inside her vagina and was unable to retrieve it for 96 hours.
Salma Briant, 39, claims her medical bills at the University of New Mexico Hospital amount to $1,168,000 and that she has suffered from severe psychological distress because of the whole ordeal.

Briant said she first inserted the cell phone inside her vagina as a dare from one of her friends but quickly realized that the phone would not come out.

"I wanted to see how it would feel to put my cell phone on vibration mode inside of me, just for fun, but it soon turned out to be a nightmare," she told judge Andrew Peterson in tears.

Users on social media only saw this summary of the story which could have fooled some into thinking it was real news:

Woman sues Samsung for $1.8M after cell phone gets stuck inside her vagina

An Albuquerque woman is suing Samsung for $1.8 million after she necessitated medical attention after inserting her cell phone inside her vagina and was unable to retrieve it for 96 hours. Salma Briant, 39, claims her medical bills at the University of New Mexico Hospital amount to $1,168,000 and t

But the woman in the picture has nothing to do with Samsung: she is Kiersten Pyke and the picture is from when she gave a press conference about an actor that allegedly groped her when she was 11.

Actor Tom Sizemore sued over claim he groped child actor

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A Utah woman who filed a lawsuit Monday accusing actor Tom Sizemore of groping her at a photo shoot when she was 11 said she is standing up for other child actors. Kiersten Pyke, 26, spoke for the first time Monday at her attorney's office in Salt Lake City about six months after her allegations against Sizemore surfaced.

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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