Was an American teenager jailed for killing Muslim refugee for raping his sister? Fact Check
A post is spreading that claims to show an image of an American teenager who, according to the post, killed a Muslim refugee for raping his 7 year old sister.
An example of the post as it appeared on Facebook is seen below, in this case posted by a pro-Trump like-farming Facebook page called Trump The Leader…
American teenage who killed Muslim refugee for raping his 7 year old sister sentenced 30 years in prison
Would you see him free? Like+share = Yes!!
Please don’t ignore this video!
The post is essentially both completely false, and a classic example of like-farming, essentially making it the spamming racist’s dream. It’s one of the worst and most blatant examples of far-right scaremongering using misinformation to spread lies and create social discord, while using social media ‘like-farming’ to spread across the Internet.
The post is categorically false. The person pictured in the post above isn’t an American teenager on trial for killing a Muslim refugee. In fact it shows a teenager named Dylan Schumaker, a 16 year old who in 2014 was sentenced to 25 years to life imprisonment for the murder of a toddler he was babysitting.
The video also opens to another image of another man, who is Osvaldo Rivera, who was convicted to 82 years imprisonment for killing a 6 year old boy.
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
The story and headline in the circulating post above is simply made up, a fabricated weapon used by those wishing to promote hatred and racism online. There are no reputable headlines that match the description given in the circulating post.
This isn’t the first time we’ve come across Dylan Schumaker in the context of Internet hoaxes. Earlier in the year his photo was also used to spread a fake story about a 17 year old for suing his parents for being born white, a fake story courtesy of nonsense website WorldNewsDailyReport.com
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
Both of these fake stories using the photo of Schumaker have become so prolific online that the other man captured in the photo, defense attorney Joseph Terranova, told Buffalo News that years later, he still hears about them every day
I hear about it almost every day…I don’t think a week goes by that someone doesn’t say ‘Are you really representing that kid?’
The bottom line is that the post is entirely fake. Please don’t spread it.
Continued below...
Thanks for reading, we hope this article helped, but before you leave us for greener pastures, please help us out.
We're hoping to be totally ad-free by 2025 - after all, no one likes online adverts, and all they do is get in the way and slow everything down. But of course we still have fees and costs to pay, so please, please consider becoming a Facebook supporter! It costs only 0.99p (~$1.30) a month (you can stop at any time) and ensures we can still keep posting Cybersecurity themed content to help keep our communities safe and scam-free. You can subscribe here
Remember, we're active on social media - so follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram and X