False and misleading social media posts about Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Cole Tomas Allen have gone viral. And just like a similar scam involving conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk’s murder, this con centers around sports fans and teams.
‘BREAKING,’ one Facebook post begins. ‘The shooter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has reportedly been identified as 30-year-old Cole Allen from Phoenix, Arizona. A former staff member of the Arizona basketball team, his wife is currently also employed by the team.’
The post is obviously generated by artificial intelligence, which one can gather from the Jordan Brand logo on Allen’s University of Arizona sweatshirt. Wildcats gear comes affixed with the Nike logo and never Michael Jordan’s ‘Jumpman.’ Furthermore, Allen has no connection to the school or its basketball team.
And that post wasn’t alone. Countless similar scam posts have been shared claiming false connections between teams and Allen, the man accused of trying to assassinate the President at Saturday’s White House correspondent’s dinner in Washington DC.
The Daily Mail has sought comment from Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on the effort to clean up the false posts, which appear to be aimed at driving sports fans to useless, ad-riddled websites.
Meta did respond to a recent SFGate.com investigation into the scam, telling the website that ‘it’s ‘reprehensible when opportunists seek to exploit moments of tragedy.’
The post is an obvious fake. Wildcats gear comes affixed with the Nike logo and never Michael Jordan’s ‘Jumpman.’ Allen has no connection to the University of Arizona
Likewise, Allen never worked for the NFL’ San Francisco 49ers, despite this post’s claim
But although the spokesperson said the website is ‘committed to removing any content that violates our policies,’ many of the fake posts remain.
Those fake stories were shared on ostensibly harmless Facebook pages with names like ‘Roll Tide, Over and Over’ and ‘Spartan Unfiltered.’
‘So far he’s been attending 15 universities,’ a commenter joked on Facebook in response to one scam post about Allen’s fictitious connection to Arizona’s basketball team.
There are even posts aimed at San Francisco 49ers fans: ‘Allen was formerly an employee…”
But a closer inspection reveals a distinct pattern: The pages typically have only a handful of followers and much, if not all, of the news appears to be fake.
All of these scam posts come with a link that takes readers to ad-heavy websites loaded with AI content. The SFGate investigation estimated these phony websites are likely generating thousands of dollars through ad revenue, possibly without much effort at all.
A similar scam surfaced in the wake of Kirk’s murder at a speaking event in Utah back in September.
Kittle’s wife shared an angry statement about the issue on his Instagram account
And Allen’s name has been used in other fake posts as well. One claims he was a driver for Savannah Guthrie, the Today Show host currently searching for her missing mother
Fake posts soon surfaced claiming 49ers tight end George Kittle urged the NFL not to memorialize the conservative influencer.
‘Football should be about the game, the competition and the fans – no politics,’ read the fake quote, falsely attributed to Kittle. ‘Stop bringing up Charlie Kirk, because it has nothing to do with what we do on the field.’
And Allen’s name has been used in other fake posts as well.
One claims he was a driver for Savannah Guthrie, the Today Show host currently searching for her missing mother. Another reports that Allen drove for German-American actor Eric Braeden.
Part of the problem appears to be the proliferation of AI content farm sites.
According to NewsGuard, and reported by SFGate, there are now over 3,000 such websites after only around 1,000 existed a year earlier. And one study from the Internet Archive claims one in three of the websites created since 2022 are AI-generated.
