In early March, a tragic story showed up on NewsBreak, a website that aggregates local news from across the country. In a series of articles, the author reported on a hit-and-run accident that had left two people dead: Herman Cruz and his 4-year-old daughter, Amelia. Herman had been driving Amelia to her cancer treatments in Richmond, Virginia, when they were killed, the author claimed.
In each of the articles, the author directed readers to a GoFundMe page created to raise money to pay for their funeral services. “All donations will help and be appreciated,” said the GoFundMe organizer, identified as Jamel El-Amin. The campaign raised more than $1,500.
But none of this was real.
The account holder who published content under the name “Blast News 365” and identified himself as “Jamel” in an author bio appears to have fabricated the story. In emails this week, Virginia authorities — state and local police, a commonwealth’s attorney — told NBC News they had no record of the victims, no reports of the hit-and-run.
In fact, the author appears to have concocted other news stories over the last several weeks. In each case, the articles included links to GoFundMe pages where readers — moved by details of grim crimes and terrible accidents — could open up their virtual pocketbooks. Three of the campaigns seen by NBC News raised a total of nearly $2,700.
Blast News 365 reported on the case of Khalid Baker, a 57-year-old man experiencing homelessness who was “brutaly [sic] beaten” and robbed after he tried to stop three men from mugging a woman at an ATM in Arlington, Virginia. The article said police were investigating the incident.
But the Arlington County Police Department “has not investigated a robbery of these circumstances,” a spokesperson confirmed in an email.
The author reported on the case of Roberta Clemons, a 77-year-old Arlington woman “who neighbors described as everyone’s grandma.” She had been found shot to death in her car. Officials were said to have charged an 18-year-old man in the killing.
But the Arlington County Police Department again confirmed it does not have “reports of a fatal shooting of an individual named Roberta Clemons.”
“We do not have reports of any recent incident matching [the] information in their report,” a department spokesperson said, “nor has a person associated with this publication reached out to our office for information.”
On Tuesday afternoon, roughly two hours after NBC News asked NewsBreak about the articles in question, all of Blast News 365’s stories on the platform appeared to have been taken down. (NBC News took screenshots of the articles this week.) In an email Wednesday morning, NewsBreak confirmed that Blast News 365’s articles had been removed.
“NewsBreak operates as an online platform that provides users with free access to a diverse range of locally relevant content by either hosting it directly or linking to third-party sources. NewsBreak’s mission is to make local information easily accessible and abundantly available, with the goal of helping people everywhere live safer, more vibrant, more truly connected lives,” a company spokesperson said.
“Our Terms of Use and Community Standards are prominently featured on our homepage. Contributors who violate our Community Standards like publishing false information, are at risk of having their account suspended and/or terminated. If news articles are found to contain false information, we remove the content in question,” the spokesperson added.
NewsBreak says it serves more than 50 million users. The website aggregates content from mainstream journalism organizations (including NBC News) and allows everyday content creators to publish local news articles about crimes and other events in their communities.
Blast News 365’s byline on NewsBreak shows that the account was designated a “NewsBreak Contributor” — a “badge” that “represents independent contributors who have met NewsBreak’s standards for quality, along with adhering to policies, requirements, and editorial guidelines.” The account had more than 800 followers on NewsBreak as of this writing.
When asked whether NewsBreak works to verify or edit information in user-generated news articles, the spokesman confirmed it does not. The spokesperson went on to say: “Striving to provide users with comprehensive and scalable local information and news free of charge, we have a robust content moderation system and take action upon identifying violations of our community standards.”
When reached for comment, a GoFundMe spokesperson said the service has “zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform.”
“This account has been banned from using the platform for any future fundraising and their fundraisers have been removed. Any donors who submit a claim will be refunded,” the spokesperson added.
The articles published by Blast News 365 would most likely raise eyebrows among anyone who regularly reads professionally produced news content. The articles were riddled with typos, grammatical errors, off-kilter formatting and other red flags.
They were also filled with discrepancies. The father killed in the hit-and-run is alternately identified as “Herman Cruz” and “Henry Cruz” in the span of just two paragraphs, for example.
Anyone who tried searching Google for more details about these cases would have come up short, too. Google does not return any relevant results when one searches for the names of the purported victims, such as family-written obituaries or news articles corroborating Blast News 365’s information.
But there were clearly people on the internet who believed what they were seeing. The fundraising campaign for Clemons’ funeral services drew $325. The one for Baker nabbed almost $800.
More than 40 people contributed to the GoFundMe campaign to cover funeral expenses for the father and daughter purportedly killed in the hit-and-run. NewsBreak users expressed their condolences in the website’s comments section. “rip both of you this is so wrong I pray this person is caught and gets time under the jail,” one user wrote.
NBC News sent messages to five possible email addresses associated with the name Jamel El-Amin, but it did not get replies. The various phone numbers associated with a person by that name either were out of service or belonged to other people.
Blast News 365’s author bio says: “Greetings! I’m Jamel, a Southerner living in a big city working to provide entertainment and information you can use.” Several of Blast News 365’s links have been shared on X by an account called El-Amin Communications LLC, though the articles themselves were removed this week.
“Blast News is dedicated to bringing informative and interesting content to include Investigative journalism,” the bio on X says. (NewsBreak did not list contact information for Blast News 365, and the aggregator’s spokespeople did not provide such information.)
In a tweet on Dec. 10, El-Amin Communications LLC shared a link to a (real) news article about the disgraced former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., who had created a profile on the video messaging service Cameo.
“He is saying to the world, this is who I am,” the tweet said. “And I am going for the cash.”
