Fake News: Man Did NOT Divorce Caucasian Wife After DNA Test Proves He Is Of 9% African descent

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Man Did NOT Divorce Caucasian Wife After DNA Test Proves He Is Of 9% African descent

Did 37-year-old Jeffrey McAllister from Massachusetts divorce his Caucasian wife after finding out through a DNA test that 9% of his descent was from Africa? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that frequently invents bizarre tales of weird crimes, strange sex acts or odd events. None of it is real.

The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on November 26, 2018 titled "Man divorces Caucasian wife after DNA test proves he is of 9% African descent" (archived here) which opened:

A Massachusetts man has put an end to a sixteen-year-long relationship with his Caucasian wife after DNA test results proved that he is of 9% African ancestry.

Jeffrey McAllister, 37, claims that racial tensions arose in the couple after learning about his sub-African origins and kept putting a strain on their sixteen-year relationship.

"The culture gap was just too important. She just couldn't understand the suffering my people have endured for centuries from the hands of her people," he explained.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail and people who didn't click through to read the disclaimer wouldn't have known it was not real:

Man divorces Caucasian wife after DNA test proves he is of 9% African descent

A Massachusetts man has put an end to a sixteen-year-long relationship with his Caucasian wife after DNA test results proved that he is of 9% African ancestry. Jeffrey McAllister, 37, claims that racial tensions arose in the couple after learning about his sub-African origins and kept putting a str

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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