Bizarre false Facebook video claiming Biden paid a mob boss for 300k votes goes viral

Baseless clip amassed over 180,000 views despite being flagged by platform

A video falsely claiming that President-elect Joe Biden paid a mob boss in Philadelphia to fill out 300,000 blank ballots has gone viral online.  

The video, which amassed over 180,000 views on Facebook, falsely alleged in its caption that “Skinny Joey” Merlino “was HIRED by the Biden team to crate fake ballots by the thousands!”

The video went viral despite being flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its news feed, PolitiFact reported. 

The conspiracy originated from a 14 November article published by The Buffalo Chronicle citing anonymous sources claiming Merlino and associates were paid $3m in cash by political operatives to fill out the ballots with Sharpie markers.

Without providing evidence the story suggests that “Democratic Party operatives working inside Philadelphia’s election office” gave Merlino “crates of raw ballots”.

The newspaper baselessly claimed these ballots were taken to two houses in South Philadelphia so they could be filled out for Mr Biden, then transported them to a backroom at the Philadelphia Convention Centre.

John Meringolo, Merlino’s attorney, called the claims “fiction” and told the Associated Press they “categorically deny everything.”

His lawyer said the account is impossible due to the fact that his client is not allowed to leave Florida where he is under supervised release after leaving federal prison.

Merlino pleaded guilty to a gambling charge in 2018 following a deadlocked jury in a criminal case that accused him of racketeering and fraud charges.

Jane Roh, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office said: “Nothing fitting the description of what is being alleged here has been reported to the District Attorney’s Office Election Task Force for criminal investigation.”

The Buffalo Chronicle has a history of publishing false stories, according to an analysis by NewsGuard, a company that rates the trustworthiness of news sites.

Ms Roh also noted that The Buffalo Chronicle “has an established history of publishing disinformation” and said that the article in question “appears to be false.”

The news site did not respond to a request for comment by the AP.

Election experts told the agency that a voter fraud scheme like the one alleged in the article would be inconceivable.

University of Pennsylvania political scientist Marc Meredith told the AP that “there are a lot of safeguards” that would prevent something like this scheme from going undetected by those who analyse data from the election.

“A scheme like you describe would have to leave a paper trail that is clearly not present in the data,” Mr Meredith said.

Reporting by the Associated Press