Recently, news of New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers facing lifetime suspension from the National Football League (NFL) over his “suspiciously speedy” recovery had been circulating online.
However, it turns out that the news was false and was part of a scam after an investigation into the news by Snopes.
Acording to the fact-checking website, earlier this month, a false and misleading paid advertisement featuring Rodgers was displayed on Meta’s social media platform, Facebook.
The ad claimed, “Aaron Rodgers facing lifetime suspension.”
The ad claimed that the Super Bowl XLV MVP was facing a “lifetime suspension” and users who clicked on it were led to a webpage that resembled that of Fox News.
The story even credited Fox News‘ chief political analyst Brit Hume as its author.
The headline read, “Aaron Rodgers gets caught! The NFL’s investigation into his ‘suspiciously speedy’ recovery reveals something shocking.”
The article claimed that Rodgers’ recent speedy recovery from an Achilles tendon injury that he sustained during the Jets’ season opener against the Buffalo Bills in September last year was tied to a product called Bloom CBD Gummies.
However, Snopes discovered that the scam article, which was hosted on a site called Cickross, not Fox News, was completely false and had been made up to promote a scam.
To make matters worse, according to a search of Cickross with the ICANN Lookup tool, the domain’s registrant may reside in China.
It is worth noting that Meta has been accepting money to display these false and scammy paid ads about Rodgers supposedly receiving a lifetime suspension since at least October 2023, according to Snopes.
This means that for the last six months, these ads leading to CBD gummies scams have been shown to users with apparently little to no resistance from multi-billion dollar social media company.