Monrovia – A screenshot of a purported article circulating on Facebook claims that a member of Unity Party standard bearer Joseph Boakai’s delegation currently in the US was caught on camera stealing from a local store.
Fact Check By: D. Olivia Banwon | LVL Fact Checker
The Claim
The post, which was made on Sunday, August 6 by Shine Liberia – a blog with 175,000 followers – has so far attracted 60 comments, 63 reactions and 8 shares.
The post, which made with a screenshot of the article, reads: “A member of Joe Boakai’s delegation was caught on camera stealing from a local store in the United States. Investigation is ongoing. Stay tuned for details”. In the screenshot which was taken from a newspaper named “Maryland Times”, reads: “Member of a Liberian Delegation arrested”.
What Did We Find?
Local Voices Liberia’s fact-checking desk verified the claim and found it to be false. Our fact-checking desk conducted a search on Google and found that the original content was manipulated.
To verify the claim, we reviewed the original content which was posted to Scribd on September 16, 2020 and did not find any report of sort on the page of the Scribd page. There is no connection between this report and the alleged incident involving Boakai’s delegation.
Scribd is an online platform that host eBooks, eNewspaper, audiobooks, and other contents accessible through a monthly subscription.
Our fact-checking desk also searched for the purported news outlet that published the story – Maryland Times – but the paper does not exist anywhere on the internet. We also search online for the article and its author but found no results.
Conclusion
Based on the results of all the online research, we conclude that the claim that a member of Joseph Boakai’s delegation to the USA was caught stealing from a shop is fake news.
Local Voices Liberia, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, has implemented the iVerify Liberia system with the objective of strengthening capacities to address threats to information integrity, especially in view of the upcoming 2023 elections, to ensure all Liberian citizens have access to credible, reliable and verified information, everywhere and at all times.
This initiative is funded by Irish Aid, Embassy of Sweden in Monrovia, European Union Delegation in Liberia and the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund. The donors have no say in the production of this fact check report.
