A 31-year-old Brazilian man living in Los Angeles leaves his comfortable life behind to pursue a humanitarian mission in Venezuela. Jonatan Diniz, founder of a non-governmental organization called Time to Change the Earth, posts photos of malnourished Venezuelan children and asks for donations on social media. The goal: raise funds for the NGO so it can purchase toys for children who are victims of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his Bolivarian Revolution. It would be a very touching story about a young idealistic do-gooder — if it weren’t all a farce.

Just days before he traveled to Venezuela, Diniz created social media profiles for a non-existent NGO and started soliciting donations. In so doing, he didn’t just fool the usual online rabble rousers on the Brazilian right, but also the Brazilian and Venezuelan governments. His antics caused a diplomatic incident during what may have already been the most tense period in the countries’ bilateral relations. On December 23, Venezuela expelled the Brazilian ambassador from the country. Three days later, Brazil declared Venezuela’s highest-ranking diplomat in the country a “persona non grata” (Venezuela had already withdrawn their ambassador in 2016 to protest the impeachment of former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff).

On December 27 Diniz was arrested by Venezuelan authorities for alleged connections to a “criminal organization with international tentacles” and held in jail for 11 days, provoking an international outcry until he was eventually released and deported.

After he was freed, Diniz published a video explaining that he went to Venezuela with the goal of getting himself arrested and, with the media attention, raising the profile of his fake NGO. But before that revelation, several prominent figures on the rising Brazilian right – including the “Free Brazil Movement” (Movimento Brasil Livre, or MBL); entertainer Danilo Gentili, who has been called the “enfant terrible of comedy in Brazil;” and journalist Rachel Sheherazade – had embraced his cause. The #FreeJonatan hashtag was created to pressure the Brazilian Foreign Ministry to get to work liberating a new national hero.

In this age of so-called fake news, no one bothered to do a basic fact-check on Diniz and his supposed organization. One Brazilian newspaper referred to Diniz as a “member of a U.S. NGO” – information that doesn’t stand up to a simple Google search.

One didn’t have to undertake a rigorous investigation to unravel the story. The first photos the ostensible NGO published on Instagram were from November 21, 2017, just weeks before his trip to Venezuela. One can already see the red flags of fraud.