Fact check: False claims of taxi driver killing passengers in New York

Hannah Hudnall, USA TODAY
·2 min read

The claim: Image shows a taxi driver in New York who's killing passengers

Social media users are sharing an image they claim shows a serial killer in New York.

"This is a man with Taxi number (2465RB) in NY who drives around taking people to kill," reads the caption of an Oct. 15 Instagram post. "My friend from the DA's office in Brooklyn just sent me this."

The post features a picture of a man sitting in a car.

It garnered more than 1,500 likes in nine days. Another version accumulated more than 100 likes in two days before it was deleted.

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But the claim is false. A spokesperson for the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office said there is no such criminal in the city. The hoax dates to 2018.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment.

No evidence killer exists

Oren Yaniv, a Brooklyn District Attorney's Office spokesperson, told USA TODAY via email that the claim is false.

"Our office knows nothing about this person or any alleged incident connected to him," Yaniv said.

The office told Snopes the same thing in 2018 when an identical claim circulated online. At the time, users claimed the alleged killer was active in cities such as New York City, Washington, D.C, and Toledo, Ohio.

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The claim appears to have originated from an article published in 2018 by the Zambian Observer. The outlet published a picture of the same man who appears in the New York taxi posts, along with the claim that he was a Congolese serial killer driving a taxi with the plate number, "2465 ALC."

USA TODAY has previously debunked numerous claims of serial killers being active in towns across the nation.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that an image shows a taxi driver in New York who's killing passengers. A spokesperson for the Brooklyn District Attorney's office said there is no such criminal in the city. The hoax dates back to 2018.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: No evidence of murderous taxi driver in New York