False Story About Vybz Kartel's Violent Prison Escape Goes Viral

The man responsible for spreading the story has come forward.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Early this morning, a wildly outrageous story of Vybz Kartel's prison escape started circulating on the internet. Within hours, large media outlets were covering the news, causing a huge frenzy of gossip and even starting a trending topic on Twitter.

The story was that Kartel, in prison on multiple murder charges, smuggled weapons into the facility and he, along with other inmates, took over control from the guards, shooting two and injuring 12 before escaping in a maintenance vehicle. To put things really over the top, the story also claimed that one prison guard died of a heart attack during the chaos. A fake Vybz Kartel Twitter account even started Tweeting to fuel the fire.

MTV UK ran with the false story (and later revised the post), helping to boost it into headlines across the web before Jamaican police denied the rumors. The man responsible for starting it all has said that he made the whole thing up for fun, not thinking that anyone would actually believe it. The original story can be read here. The author of the fake story explained:

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