Tag: hoax

Black Woman Who Claimed She Was Kidnapped By White Man With ‘Orange Hair’ Admits She Made It All Up

A black woman who sparked a nationwide manhunt by claiming she was kidnapped in Alabama by a white man with “orange hair” admitted through her lawyer on Monday that she made it all up.

From The Independent, “Carlee Russell claimed she was kidnapped by a man with orange hair. It was all a lie”:

Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell seemed to vanish on 13 July after calling 911 to report she had seen a toddler walking on the side of Interstate 459 in Alabama.

The 25-year-old told dispatch she stopped her car to check on the child, and called a family member before losing contact, according to the Hoover Police Department.

By the time officers arrived five minutes later, Ms Russell had seemingly disappeared, with her car engine still running, and the toddler was nowhere to be found.

Law enforcement and family members mounted a desperate search for the missing woman and pleaded with the public for help.

Then just over 48 hours later, police were notified that Ms Russell had returned home on foot.

She told detectives that she had been kidnapped by a white man with “orange hair”, and held captive in a semi-truck trailer and house before escaping.

However, less than two weeks after making headlines for a harrowing tale of disappearance, child neglect, and kidnapping, the Alabama woman admitted on 24 July it was all a lie.

NBC News reported that police said “Russell told them she was forced into an 18-wheeler truck and taken to a home where a man and a woman told her to get undressed and then took photos of her.”

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Carlee Russell fired from spa job, co-workers ‘pissed’ about increasingly suspicious kidnapping story

Carlee Russell has officially disappeared — from the payroll of her Alabama job.

The owner of the Woodhouse spa in Birmingham told The Post that she’s been canned, and that her steaming co-workers are “pissed” about their former colleague’s increasingly suspect kidnapping account.

Owner Stuart Rome said his staffers were stunned after hearing of Russell’s purported disappearance and did everything in their power to help bring her home.

“It was really devastating for them thinking a co-worker was abducted,” he said. “The following day, Saturday, it was the busiest day of the week, and they had to plug along and work and in the off times pass out flyers and other things.”

But since Russell abruptly resurfaced police have revealed she had searched for bus ticket prices and movies about kidnapping on the day she disappeared, drawing mounting skepticism over her account.

Her co-workers’ concern also started to turn to anger.

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UFO DISINFO: Four times the US military hoaxed alien contact through the decades

In June 2021, if you were to new to ‘UFO Twitter’ or other social media and websites discussing the UFO topic, you might quite reasonably conclude that this is the year of upper-case D ‘Disclosure’ – finally, the long-awaited revelation from the U.S. government about the existence of alien craft visiting the Earth. From the last four years of revelations in major newspaper and television features regarding military pilots sighting UFOs, through the regular release in recent months of new UFO videos ‘leaked’ from military sources, to this month’s upcoming official report from the Pentagon on what they know about UAPs/UFOs, there has been an accumulation of new information that has led to a growing anticipation of ‘something big’ around the corner.

Many older heads in the UFO scene, though, have been more circumspect. While they have been dismissed by the ‘noobs’ in the scene as being bitter, overly cynical, living in the past and/or not being able to keep up with the recent deluge of information, there is a reason for their skepticism: they know that, for many decades now, certain elements of the U.S. military have worked to seed fake UFO and alien contact information into the public consciousness for their own purposes.

Whatsmore, as Adam Gorightly points out in his book Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO disinformation in the Age of Aquarius, a number of these cases involved supposedly rogue US military and intelligence employees revealing secret UFO/alien information to ambitious film-makers and researchers covering UFO and paranormal topics. Sound familiar?

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Cop Fabricated Story About Being ‘Carjacked by Two Black Men’ — After He Accidentally Shot Himself

Earlier this month, a sheriff’s office in Florida announced the termination of a former officer who faked a racist carjacking and subsequent shooting to camouflage his own inability to handle a firearm responsibly.

Dakotah Wood, 21, previously employed with the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), has been hit with a plethora of charges, including tampering with physical evidence, false reports of crimes, and discharging a firearm in public or residential property.

On June 30, 2023, deputies responded to an alleged carjacking and shooting in Weeki Wachee Gardens, where they found Wood nursing a gunshot wound to the leg. He initially spun a tale of unknown men, who he claimed were Black, attempting to steal his vehicle. According to Wood, they threatened his life and shot him in the thigh before fleeing the scene.

As the narrative unfolded, however, inconsistencies became evident. Wood later admitted to detectives that the elaborate story was a fabrication, crafted in a desperate attempt to avoid repercussions for his own reckless behavior. He confessed to shooting himself accidentally while “playing” with his gun, alone in the park, distraught over relationship issues with his girlfriend.

Despite Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis describing such situations as “relatively rare,” it’s important to underline the frequency with which such occurrences truly happen. It’s not an isolated incident or a one-off mistake by an errant officer. It speaks volumes about a systemic issue, showing a disturbing trend within law enforcement: the fabrication of crimes to cover up their own inadequacies.

A 2016 study by the National Registry of Exonerations found that police officers and prosecutors often contribute to wrongful convictions by manufacturing crimes. The fabricated story of Wood falls into the same troubling pattern, marking another instance of the gross misuse of power within law enforcement.

What’s more concerning is the damaging impact such false narratives have on community relations and the perception of marginalized racial groups. When a figure of authority, such as a law enforcement officer, propagates false stereotypes, it fuels the fire of racial bias and reinforces the cycle of prejudice and injustice.

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There Were At Least 13 Campus Hate-Crime Hoaxes This School Year

The 2022-23 school year saw 13 hate crime hoaxes and six questionable claims, according to a College Fix analysis.

Sports competitions continue to oddly be a source for race hoaxes, despite the omnipresence of phones that can capture alleged racial slurs.

Pennsylvania State University fans found themselves falsely accused of using racial slurs against Rutgers University’s men’s basketball team. “Further investigation into reported fan behavior at the Penn State versus Rutgers basketball game on [Feb. 26] has found that no apparent racial slurs were used by Penn State fans,” the university announced.

By now, it should be clear that claims of racial slurs at sports games are likely not true.

The hoax that attracted the most attention of them all began in August, when Duke University volleyball player Rachel Richardson claimed that someone at a game against Brigham Young University kept yelling the n-word at her. This is actually two hate crime hoaxes, because her godmother also claimed that someone yelled the word every single time the black volleyball player went to serve.

The hoax led the University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach to cancel a game against BYU, even after the hoax had been debunked. The University of Pacific canceled its game against BYU after the debunked hoax as well.

August was a busy time for hate crime hoaxes, as that is when a black female in a “head scarf” named Zaynab Bintabdul-Hadijakien was charged for an attack on the Black Cultural Center. UVA officials would not identify the suspect, and even a police report redacted her race, but The Fix dug around and found out she is a black female.

Even when a black Democrat at Harvard University stood accused of yelling a “homophobic slur” at a peer, LGBT students on campus blamed the pro-life club. This did not appear to be part of a rhetorical exercise, like when the president of MIT’s student government perpetrated two campus hate-crime hoaxes, hanging posters and chalking slurs against LGBTQ people, Latinos and other “marginalized communities,” to protest free speech.

He was not the only LGBT person who left slurs for others in his tribe. For example, a “non-binary” University of Connecticut student found “homophobic language” on a dorm room door – but the culprits were other LGBTQ students.

Other race hoaxes this school year include: the juvenile allegedly behind the bomb threats against historically black colleges and universities, a black man who trashed the University of Florida’s Institute for Black Culture sign, and the claim that white students surrounded a black female student at Sam Houston State University and poured water on her.

The university told The Fix in September 2022 that police were “unable to verify” the claim.

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HATE HOAX: Man who claimed to be victim of San Diego gay bashing that left him with burns actually was the perpetrator of beating of pregnant woman, police say

It has been revealed that a gay man who claimed to have been beaten and set on fire by a group of homophobes actually sustained his injuries while attacking a pregnant woman.

Scott Rowin, 39, originally alleged that he had been “gay bashed” while walking in his San Diego neighborhood, a story that was parroted by the media and local Antifa networks. CCTV footage, however, showed that he was torched by the expecting mother as she defended herself from his violent actions, which landed her in the hospital with injuries.

According to the San Diego Police Department, the incident took place on June 12 on the 900 block of 6th Avenue around 10:40 pm. Officers responded to numerous 911 calls reporting a man beating up a pregnant woman, however when they arrived, he had already fled the scene, ABC 10 reported.

Just under two hours later, a man called 911 reporting that he had been set on fire, and it was quickly determined that he was the suspect wanted for the aforementioned beating, and that she had burned him.

In the days since the attack, investigators have tracked down CCTV footage revealing the “initial physical assault by the man on the pregnant woman and the subsequent use of fire as a weapon by the pregnant woman on the man.” The man was identified as Rowin.

“This is a complex investigation, and detectives are examining all aspects and allegations,” the SDPD said. 

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Amazon shuts down customer’s smart home for a week after delivery driver claimed he heard racist slur through Ring doorbell – even though no one was home

Amazon reportedly shut down a customer’s smart home after the delivery driver claimed he heard a racial slur coming through the doorbell, even though no one was home. 

Brandon Jackson, of Baltimore, Maryland, came home on May 25 to find that he had been locked out of his Amazon Echo, which many devices, including his lights, are connected to. 

He would later learn that Amazon locked him out of his account after a delivery driver dropped off a package the day before. Jackson, an engineer at Microsoft, said ‘everything seemed fine’ after the package arrived at his home and had initially thought he was locked out because someone had tried to ‘access my account repeatedly, triggering a lockout.’ 

But none of that was true. A representative directed him to an email he received from an executive that provided a phone number to call. When he called the number, he was told in a ‘somewhat accusatory’ tone that the driver had reported ‘receiving racist remarks’ from his doorbell.

‘This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions,’ he wrote on Medium. 

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Ohio Cops Raided Afroman’s House Looking for a Dungeon Because of a Bizarre Confidential Informant Tip

When sheriff’s deputies in Adams County, Ohio, raided Afroman’s house last year, they were looking for more than just marijuana, which the rapper is famously fond of. The deputies were searching for evidence of outlandish claims from a confidential informant that the house contained a basement dungeon.

The Adams County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) executed a search warrant on Afroman’s house last August on suspicion of drug possession, drug trafficking, and kidnapping. Afroman was not charged with a crime, and the kidnapping angle was never explained. But now, public records obtained by Arthur West, a public records advocate, and provided to Reason shed more light on the raid, which has since led to a bitter legal battle between Afroman and the ACSO deputies.

According to the search warrant affidavit, the Adams County Sheriff’s Office received a tip from a confidential informant that Joseph Foreman, better known as Afroman, was not only trafficking large amounts of marijuana, but he also “has a basement, referred to as ‘the dungeon’ in which he…keeps women locked in, forcing them to urinate and defecate in a bucket as punishment for upsetting or disobeying him.”

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John Durham releases final report, concludes FBI had no verified intel when it opened probe on Trump

Special Counsel John Durham released a damning final report Monday after more than three years investigating the Russia collusion probe, declaring the FBI had no verified intelligence or evidence when it opened the Crossfire Hurricane probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016. The prosecutor, however, recommended no new criminal charges.

“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in a 300-plus page report sent to Congress and others and obtained by Just the News.

DOJ was slated to make the report public later Monday.

The prosecutor faulted the department and the FBI for failing to follow their own standards and allowing a probe to persist, including the surveillance of an American citizen, without basis under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we concluded the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

“The FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probably cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power.”

You can read the full report here:

 Durham Report

The report’s release touched off instant outrage and impact on Capitol Hill, where House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted he planned to summon Durham for testimony next week.

The FBI immediately reacted, saying Durham’s findings justified the changes that current Director Christopher Wray made after taking over from fired Director James Comey.

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‘No proof’ US landed on moon – Ex-Russian space boss

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.  

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.  

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.  

The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed. 

The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.  

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