Nationwide — According to CNN, the most popular Facebook fan page dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement was fake. After a careful investigation, it was discovered that the page was being run by a middle-aged white man from Australia.
Before it was recently deactivated, the page had almost 700,000 followers – more than twice as many as the page for the official organization. Even worse, the page sold t-shirts, coffee mugs, and reportedly encouraged people to donate to fundraisers that raised as much as $100,000. The money, however, was obviously not used to help the African American community because it was deposited into an Australian bank account.
Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of the official Black Lives Matter movement, says that she contacted Facebook months ago about the page and asked them to take it down. However, it wasn’t until CNN contacted one of the Australian men who may have been associated with it that the page suddenly was deactivated.
The people behind the page also reportedly had a popular Facebook Group also called “Black Lives Matter” with nearly 40,000 members.