Was Pfizer VP Rady Johnson really arrested by federal agents? This is what was reported
A website known for publishing conspiratorial hoaxes and satirical content claimed that Rady Johnson, the executive vice president of Pfizer Inc., was arrested last Friday.
The website, “Vancouver Times,” reported that Johnson, who also serves as Pfizer’s chief compliance, quality and risk officer, was taken into custody by federal agents following the release of incriminating documents.
“Rady Johnson, the executive vice president of Pfizer, has been arrested at his home and charged with multiple counts of fraud by federal agents. He was taken into custody and is awaiting a bail hearing,” the Vancouver Times wrote.
“This comes as 1,000s of classified documents from Pfizer were released, showing the true risks of the experimental vaccine,” the website reported.
A tweet by “Trevor Lloyd-Jones” posted the next day quickly garnered thousands of likes and retweets. In the tweet, Lloyd-Jones wrote: “It’s started. Vice President of #Pfizer has been arrested at his home and charged with multiple counts of fraud by US federal agents.”
A link to the tweet by Lloyd-Jones was later embedded into the Vancouver Times article with an update that states, “Twitter has started censoring this article. To fight back against censorship, send a report to Twitter, and tell them this link is safe. Alternatively, you can still RT the tweet (from Trevor Lloyd-Jones) below.”
The claim of censoring refers to a safeguard put in place by Twitter to prevent users from following untrustworthy or dangerous links. The disclaimer appears when clicking on the article from Lloyd-Jones’ tweet.
“The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy,” the disclaimer states.
The claim later began spreading across social media and was later proven to be false by multiple fact-checking outlets.
An incident similar to this one occurred last year when the same self-proclaimed “satire website” falsely claimed that CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, was arrested. The claim also went viral on social media and was later deemed false, Reuters fact checkers reported.
The Bourla article mentioned that the reason no other major news outlets were reporting on the incident was because police “ordered a media blackout, which was immediately approved by a judge.”
According to Dan Evon of Snopes, a popular fact-checking site, this tactic is often used by sites like Vancouver Times to persuade readers into falling for the hoax.
“Conspiratorial junk news websites often claim that there was a ‘media blackout’ in an attempt to explain why their fictitious stories aren’t receiving coverage in the mainstream press,” Evon wrote. “The reason that the mainstream press hasn’t covered this story, however, is because the CEO of Pfizer was not arrested for fraud.”
Although there are multiple copycat articles from other independent blogs reiterating Johnson’s arrest across the internet, there has been no coverage on the subject by traditional news sources. Also, there are no arrest records related to Johnson’s alleged detainment.
