On the night of January 16th to 17th, police arrested a 71-year-old man who was wanted on an arrest warrant at the German-Dutch border. The officers discovered: He had 41 identities.

The most important things about the man with 41 other identities in brief:

  • A man with 41 aliases was arrested
  • Sharepic speaks of a migrant
  • Official press report negated: It was a German citizen

The man had 41 other identities in addition to his real one. In other words: He has gone by many different names in recent years. So far, so good, so spectacular. Kind of reminds me of the movie “Catch me if you can”. Except that reality is usually not so pleasant.

And social media can end up being even more unpleasant if you turn this report into a hoax. And so this arrest managed to become a sharepic.

Sharepics (also called tiles in plain English) always have a problem: They usually put a headline on a small image in a shortened form or without citing sources. So you're dealing with a kind of pure headline reporting that can, among other things, have a manipulative effect.

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Like in this case, where the sharepic takes up the arrest and claims: “Nothing is impossible! Migrant caught with 41 identities. Welcome to Merkel Germany…”

41 identities, screenshot Facebook

Fact check identities

What's appropriate about this sharepic: Yes, a man with 41 identities was arrested by the police. What is ultimately wrong with the Sharepic: The term “migrant” is problematic because it is a German. In an inquiry regarding the sharepic, the police described this as an obvious hoax and referred to the following report:

The federal police have arrested a 71-year-old man wanted on an arrest warrant at the German-Dutch border. In addition to his real identity, the man is also known to authorities by another 41 different names. He still has to serve a prison sentence of two years and nine months.

As part of border police surveillance, at around 10:30 p.m. on the night of Thursday to Friday, the officers stopped a car that had entered Germany via Autobahn 30 from the Netherlands.

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The check of the 71-year-old passenger's personal details revealed that the man, also known by 41 different aliases, was wanted by the judiciary with an arrest warrant. The German national had been legally sentenced to two years and nine months in prison since May 2011 for two counts of fraud and embezzlement.

Since he had since then evaded the execution of his sentence, he had been wanted on an arrest warrant for several years. The 71-year-old was taken to a correctional facility by federal police.

See also: Police press release

This might also be of interest:

The wrong quote from Margarete Bause


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )