Fact Check

Eminem Stabbed

Rapper Eminem was nearly killed by a fan in New York who stabbed him four times?

Published May 15, 2013

Claim:

Claim:   Rapper Eminem was nearly killed by a fan in New York who stabbed him four times.


FALSE


Example:   [Collected via e-mail, May 2013]


Is this true? I saw this on Facebook:

Rapper Eminem left nearly DEAD after being stabbed 4 times in NYC!


 

Origins:   Marshall Bruce Mathers III, better known as rapper Eminem, has not been left nearly dead after being stabbed four times by a crazed fan in New York, nor was anything remotely like that type of incident captured

on "surveillance video." Facebook posts reporting this information in May 2013 are merely survey scam lures which employ a barely altered recycling of a similar fraudulent come-on circulated back in December 2011. (That previous version used the very same photograph and identical claims about a popular singer having been stabbed in New York; the only difference was that the putative victim was Justin Bieber rather than Eminem. The photograph itself had been used in a 2006 hoax about an airman purported to have been stabbed during a bar fight near Kunsan Air Base in South Korea.)

Users who click on the links included in these posts in order to see the advertised "surveillance video" are led to sites that require them to complete surveys before viewing it, but there is no real video at the end of the process — just scammers who collect commissions from duping people into taking online surveys and signing up for various expensive programs in a quest to claim "free" prizes:

Last updated:   17 May 2013

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.