Earlier today, a hacker leaked the Twitter direct messages of Brexit donor Arron Banks.

Excerpts of genuine bona fide messages have been published by various individuals already, but one of the messages receiving the most traction appears to be entirely fake.

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Indeed, in the fraudulent messages, Banks appears to call northern votes “northern monkeys,” in a supposed exchange with Conservative Dominic Raab. This exchange did not occur. Scram News has seen the database as uploaded by Banks’s hacker. No such messages as follow exist within that database.

Further proof that the messages have been faked include:

Identical id number for both messages. Every message has its own id.

Made up profile id number for “Raab”.

The timestamps for the messages are in the wrong order. The leaked files show the messages from most recent to the oldest, but the faked screenshot shows the older message before the newer message.

Banks’ Twitter account has since been suspended. A genuine leak has occurred, as confirmed by Banks’s friend Andy Wigmore. But these messages are not real, and sharing them only contributes to the problem of disinformation in political discourse (and may land you in legal hot water!).

Social media can often create a frenzy around information that turns out to be false. It’s always worth checking your facts before sharing.

As regular Scram News readers will be aware, we oppose Arron Banks and all he stands for with a vengeance. But fake news should be called out, whoever the victim.

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