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Snopes.com CEO arrested on charges of fraud and corruption

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Snopes.com editor attacks messenger, shoots pianist, leading police to discovery of corrupt and fraudulent practices inside the organization.

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LOS ANGELES, CA - Snopes.com owners Barbara and David Mikkelson were detained by police today after an unrelated investigation of a Snopes.com editor lead police onto a paper trail of corruption, bribery, and fraud at the very heart of the fact-checking organization.

Evidence obtained by police has revealed that Snopes.com, which markets itself as "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation," has a history of accepting money and favors from left-leaning and pro-Islamic political groups and individuals for helping them to advance their cause by rigging public discourse with selective fact-finding and deliberate manipulation of public opinion.

Late Monday morning, Brian Williston, a Snopes.com editor, who also doubles as the accountant, found himself at a flea market on the outskirts of Los Angeles. As he was browsing the different tables and tents looking for antiques, an old mechanical piano began playing Dixie's Land, a song that was adopted as a de facto anthem of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and is now considered offensive by some due to its link to the iconography and ideology of the Old South.

The tune sparked an outrage in Williston, who began yelling and cursing those who "would like to bring back slavery and racial separation," and ordering the vendors to "turn off that racist music." When no one nearby claimed to know how to turn off the one-hundred-year-old machine, Williston became violent. He started grabbing various antique objects from the vendors' tables and throwing them at the antique piano in an attempt to silence the music.

A bystander, later identified as William Barksdale, working as a courier for the L.A. Messenger Service, attempted to calm Williston down, saying that "someone is just trying to see if that the piano still works" and "it's only a song, don't shoot the pianist," but that only prompted the infuriated editor to redirect his rage to the messenger. Williston, who is white, began to choke Barksdale, who is black, while screaming "Shut up! Shut up!" as the mechanical piano continued to play Dixie's Land in the background.

After some of the shoppers intervened and pried Williston's hands off the courier's throat, the Snopes.com editor fled the scene of the incident. LAPD quickly identified Williston by the personal check he left with one of the vendors, which contained his full name and address. While inside his home, Williston ignored commands to open the door, causing police to use forced entry in order to detain him.

The arresting officer caught Williston slipping some papers under a Persian rug, which prompted the police to remove the rug and examine the documents underneath it. One of them turned out to be a handwritten ledger, containing names of well-known individuals and organizations who have been paying Snopes.com to debunk stories that cast them in a bad light, while validating damaging half-truths and rumors about their political opponents.

Having established their website as a reputable resource for validating and debunking stories in American popular culture since 1995, the Mikkelson couple soon found themselves in a position to influence public discourse by punishing or rewarding certain cultural and political biases. Before long they were accepting money to promote some rumors and downplay or completely ignore some others, which over the years have brought them millions of dollars, according to the source.

Especially scandalous may be the website's possible collaboration with left-leaning national media organizations, which started with payments to Snopes.com to overlook or validate their inaccurate and biased reporting, and eventually evolved into a full-scale coordinated effort with left-leaning groups and public relation firms to construct a media narrative that gave legitimacy to certain opinions, political causes and public figures, while discrediting other opinions, causes, and public figures.

The list of groups and individuals paying to use the website's clout ranged from local politicians to transnational entities to foreign governments, including Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Palestinian Authority. None of the specifics or individual names are being revealed while the investigation is still ongoing, but a police source has indicated that "the shockwaves will rock the world of the media and the political establishment."

Several watchdog groups have already condemned Snopes.com as a corrupt organization with zero credibility and urged their readers to disregard any political debunking from this tainted source. But some media experts predict that, given the high-profile names involved, as well as the power and magnitude of the political opinion-generating machine of which Snopes.com was only a small wheel, the story may never be allowed to reach a full-blown scandal and will soon be discarded as an urban legend, joining a long line of other similar stories debunked by Snopes.com.

Additional reporting by Red Square

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Footage of the player piano that ignited the incident released by the LAPD


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Congratulations on getting another article in the Mother Page.

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Sure to be debunked by Snopes.com from the computer in the prison library...

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Fraud and corruption? I doubt that very much as this stinks of the Koch brothers all day long. Rethuglicans will stop at nothing to smear some of the best people on earth - both living and non-living. What can we do as a collective to support comrade Mikkelson? An obvious case of mistaken identity.

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It is korrekt. Moreover, Persian rug was a personal gift from Saddam Hussein.

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It's absurd that any of this activity could be considered fraud and/or corruption. This is simply everyday business practice of an advertainment website. It's certainly no different from how the political parties operate.

Do you think that politicians would write laws that would make them illegal? That would be crazy.

Obviously, we're going to need the SCOTUS bench to determine what the laws were supposed to be to ensure that nobody is unfairly persecuted for simply following Party™ directives.

There, truly, is nothing to see, here. Besides, what difference, at this point, does it matter?

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Comrades,

Milk Carton 5.jpg





Nearly 72 hours have elapsed since Comrade Chedoh revealed the awful truth about Snopes to the world. And where, may I ask, is our comrade NOW? Is it time to order the milk cartons?

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Comrade Craptek,
If you wish to find Chedoh you must use a more effective means than milk cartons.

Boose_Cartons.jpg

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Comrades, have no fear I am alive and well. Due to recent increased activity of my conservative neighbors, much of my time has been spent watching and spying on them them on behalf of the Federal Government! This has sadly limited the amount of time I can spend coding and decoding these messages to you from the hidden radio in my closet. But, my commitment to the party is strong. I will still be sending you updates and news soon!

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Soviet Mike Komsomolets wrote:Comrade Craptek,
If you wish to find Chedoh you must use a more effective means than milk cartons.

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You certainly know your Chedohs, Comrade Mike! Display a simple image - and in less than an hour he appears!

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It turns out, Snopes has a "fan" page on Facebook, called Snopes Lies, and they posted a link to this story.

Here's what they have for their header image:

Snopes_Cartoon_Spam.png

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Chedoh Snopes.JPG

Just saw somebody post this story from Media Circus on an unrelated, obscure social network.

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Snopes hasn't debunked this story yet, but TruthOrFiction.com did.

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Snopes CEO Arrested on Fraud, Corruption Charges-Fiction!

The Truth:

Barbara and David Mikkelson have not been arrested on fraud and corruption charges.

A fake news website called The People's Cube started that rumor with a story that appeared under the headline, “Snopes.com CEO arrested on charges of fraud and corruption.” According to the report:

LOS ANGELES, CA – Snopes.com owners Barbara and David Mikkelson were detained by police today after an unrelated investigation of a Snopes.com editor lead police onto a paper trail of corruption, bribery, and fraud at the very heart of the fact-checking organization.

Evidence obtained by police has revealed that Snopes.com, which markets itself as “the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation,” has a history of accepting money and favors from left-leaning and pro-Islamic political groups and individuals for helping them to advance their cause by rigging public discourse with selective fact-finding and deliberate manipulation of public opinion.

The story goes that police followed a paper trail to Barbara and David Mikkelson after a Snopes editor lashed out a flea market vendor in Los Angeles for playing the song “Dixie's Land” because of its ties to the Confederacy and Old South.

The story was shared thousands of times, but it's a work of fiction.

The People's Cube describes itself as a People's Political Humor and Satire Collective, among other things.

TruthorFiction.com previously investigated a separate eRumor that claimed Snopes was a secret tool of the Democratic Party. Click here for that report.

All I can say is that site is in bad need of a competent web designer.

mi
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You had me at the shooting of pianist!

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Now this is no joke:

Snopes Gets Busted Trying to Cover Obama's Lies

Rumor-disproving website Snopes has proven itself especially unreliable on all matters political, and it did so again this week when it tried to “bust” the myth that President Obama had paid Iran $400 million in exchange for American citizens being held in Iranian jails.

There are a few more debunkings of Snopes' debunkings in that article, all revealing a zealous defense of progdom come.

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Comrade Red Square,

May I add this note of clarification?

All things being equal, and they almost never are, - except rarely when necessity prevails or facts overshadow the normally accessible pathways of logical expression - journalistic ambivalence and/or hesitation (even then, the controlling factors of need and speed usually, though not necessarily always in that order, enter into play) often alters the public's somewhat arcane historical perspective and in so doing re-positions their views on the former (not latter) areas of interest.

I hope this straightens things out - a bit.


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Craptek News Service

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Curiously enough, this thread continues to generate passionate responses in social media. Here's a message to me a month ago via Facebook, but I only noticed it just now:

From Kathy Konkle

Just found out that your hit piece on Snopes was satire. I ,like many people, fell for it discrediting a very reliable source of information. Just because you don't like the answers on Snopes doesn't mean they are not true. You are an anti American traitor and as unpatriotic as it gets. If you are not actually a citizen then fuck off. Your Putin Puppet boy trump will not win and your conservative buddies will eventually all die off to the great relief of the majority of this country.

I checked her Facebook page and it's quite telling, especially when she brags about being "the educated majority" in a rant full of bad spelling with no punctuation and no proper capitalization.

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Dear Kathy Kankle Konkle,

First of all, forgive me for misspelling your name - though I have an excuse. As a traitorous, unpatriotic, conservative puppet the sight of three K's in a row momentarily hijacked my tiny brain. It happens now and then. But don't worry. I'll be dead soon and everything will return to normal.

Anyway, I wrote to ask how you're feeling now that the primary source of reliable information in your life has been restored. We all feel terrible about your momentary loss of faith in Snopes and the personal pain and anguish we thoughtlessly - albeit inadvertently - brought down upon you. Next time someone is careless enough to publish a satire on TPC without prefacing the story with a WARNING LABEL they will be promptly dismembered and eaten by the staff. Hopefully, the prospect of such a harsh and painful death will act as a strong deterrent in the future.

Thanks for your helpful criticism and suggestions on how to improve this site.

CC


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You two better watch out! She's followed by THIRTEEN people! You don't want them down on you, man!

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Captain Craptek wrote:Next time someone is careless enough to publish a satire on TPC without prefacing the story with a WARNING LABEL they will be promptly dismembered and eaten by the staff.
Prepare for news stories and Facebook posts about atavistic cannibalism at The People's Cube.

Although my cousins in the wild prefer to eat their prey without prior dismemberment, I am happy to see that Cubists are ever ready to spread the wealth around. (Of course, suspicious minds might wonder whether this is just a way for the prep chef to grab all the best parts. One must remain vigilant, comrades.)

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Rumors of cannibalism at the People's Cube (and in the Royal Navy) are almost entirely unfounded.

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Ivan Betinov wrote:Rumors of cannibalism at the People's Cube (and in the Royal Navy) are almost entirely unfounded.
That's true, we don't eat our own at the Cube (the Presidium has banned cannibalism at show trials), just trolls.

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Komissar al-Blogunov wrote:
Ivan Betinov wrote:Rumors of cannibalism at the People's Cube (and in the Royal Navy) are almost entirely unfounded.
That's true, we don't eat our own at the Cube (the Presidium has banned cannibalism at show trials), just trolls.

Might I add that cannibalism means "the eating of people". According to Kubist statutes, dissenters are not people.

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The number of debunking websites in this Five-Year Plan has been growing by leaps and bounds, as the Central Planning Committee has centrally planned.

Here's another one: Lead Stories / Hoax Alert

Hoax Alert: Snopes.com CEO NOT Arrested On Charges Of Fraud And Corruption


Their headlines could make a hilarious news parody site on their own - I wish I had thought of that!

  • Vladimir Putin Will NOT Sing At Donald Trump's Inauguration
  • Woman DID NOT say Michael Jackson's Ghost Molested Her Kids
  • Donald Trump Did NOT Bite Twin Babies At Colorado Rally
  • African Villagers Have NOT Captured a Real Life Pikachu Using Pokemon Go
  • Black Teen NOT Shot After Police Mistake Hoverboard For Machine Gun

And so on...




 
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