There have been many cases of fake social media posts fooling sports media personalities, athletes, and fans. Generally, though, the fake account in question has had a similar account name to an actual reporter, or has pretended to be a local reporter, and doesn’t have a very obvious “parody” in its bio (at least not until after the fake post starts to take off).
That’s not what happened with a X (formerly Twitter) post from @Derrico_Henrio, whose bio is “PARODY ACCOUNT – TCU Grad – Former Meteorologist – Pulitzer Prize Winner – Lawyer – Tax Fraud Enthusiast – Sports Nut – Actor – NOT AFFILIATED WITH CBS SPORTS,” but who changed a display name and image to look like CBS Sports’ college football account Friday and put out a post about a supposed sports betting scandal at Baylor (which did not happen):
BREAKING: 22 Baylor football players have been indicted in an illegal gambling bust by McLennan County deputies. It is believed that several bets were placed on point spreads of Baylor football games during the 2023 season. The investigation is currently ongoing. pic.twitter.com/T3mcM0ThHb
— CBS Sports College Football 🏈 (@derrico_henrio) May 18, 2024
That was quickly referenced as obvious satire by many, including CBS Sports’ Shehan Jeyarajah:
The account with the handle “derrico_henrio” is in fact not the official CBS Sports account. Hope this helps. https://t.co/DnwduL8SC7
— Shehan Jeyarajah (@ShehanJeyarajah) May 18, 2024
However, the post picked up a ton of views (more than one million as of 1 p.m. ET Saturday), and a lot of quote tweets taking it seriously from some prominent people. And many of those were still up more than 12 hours later with no follow-ups, including one from Jason Whitlock:
Shocking. This is going on all over the country. https://t.co/PU7z946Uak
— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) May 18, 2024
Here are a few of the many other comments taking this seriously:
Sports betting is going to kill sports https://t.co/MxAvQaFcgE
— Tiffany Oshinsky (@TMOluvsSports) May 18, 2024
Athletes? Gambling on sports when they’re prohibited? Who could have saw this coming when they legalized sports betting!? https://t.co/hhW8iBNT1y
— Greg Finley (@_GregFinley) May 18, 2024
Friends of mine always act like I’m a conspiracy theorist when I bring this up. With as widespread as sports betting has become, and that NIL money flowing, it’s happening way more than people know… https://t.co/hiVlBdBN0k
— Jackson K (@premierTAMU) May 18, 2024
This even sparked one particular threat to sue. That came from Sarah Kennedy Ellis, a vice president (global demand and growth marketing) at Google Cloud:
Welp. This will be a good gut check for how good our litigators coming out of BU Law are these days… bc this kind of post gaining a ton of traction w known false info could actually sway recruits, parents & even broad brand perception impacting enrollment… aka damage$, yo. 🍿
— Sarah Kennedy Ellis (@saykay) May 18, 2024
Ellis later somewhat walked that back:
Nah, but I am going to write you off on my tax return this year as my favorite charity.
— Sarah Kennedy Ellis (@saykay) May 18, 2024
At any rate, this does fall into a long history of people falling for fake social media posts. And it’s amusing that this one took off so much despite it being much more obviously fake, particularly with an account handle that’s nowhere near the account being impersonated.
Some of that may be because there have been some betting scandals with some similarities to what’s being reported here (although none yet with suggestions of this many athletes on one team involved in betting on their own games). And there are certainly going to be more gambling scandals. But, as always, verifying that information is real and not satire does matter.
[@derrico_henrio on X/Twitter]
