Network users distribute the story of a very entrepreneurial old woman who, in her 83 years, started 65 cats and taught them to steal from their neighbors. We checked whether such a daring crime was actually committed.

The description of the crime of the century, as history was nicknamed in social networks, looks something like this. 83-year-old Ruth Greggson from the city of Columbus (Ohio) allegedly became the first person in the history of the United States, who was accused of teaching cats theft. During a search of an elderly woman, the police found jewelry worth $ 650,000 - it is believed that cats cleaned more than 5,000 houses and apartments. The investigation in the case began in the fall of 2021, when the neighbors said that they began to disappear small brilliant and valuable objects, and before the disappearance of things nearby, they saw Gregson cats. According to the culprit herself, she taught animals to steal so that they “earn their food” (the old woman fed pets only if they brought valuable things home). All 65 cats and another 17 kittens have already been transferred to the animal protection society.

In March 2022, this plot was widely dispersed by public in VKontakte: among them official communities "Cube Media", "Metro newspaper", "Guardians of the Motherland" And "YaPlakal!", and also E s t h é t i q u e (1.2 million subscribers), "Gulag" (473 000), Custodi et Serva (249,000), "ZSh" (2.7 million) and "Male Journal" (1.4 million).

March 21, 2022 about cats and their trainers wrote publications "Knife" And "Disgusting men", there the source is the site New Jersey BriefWhere the news came out on March 20. However, the story itself is not new: for example, in VKontakte there are several posts about Gregson and for 2018 year, and for 2019and for 2020and for 2021thBut then the record did not become viral.

However, the original appeared even earlier. According to the fact of the Coaching resource Snopes, the source of news is a site World News Daily Report (WNDR), known for its invented stories. There the material was released back in November 2017. Understand that only fakes publish on the site, you can also Slogan “What Facts Don’t Matter” (“Facts do not matter”), and according to the disclaimer where It is said The following: “WNDR takes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All the characters appearing in the texts on this site are completely invented, even if they are based on real people, and any similarity between them and any people, alive, dead or undead is an ordinary miracle. ”

By the way, earlier we have repeatedly denied other fictions of World News Daily Report, including stories about old womanwho gave birth to a child in 101, about girl, arrested for tens of thousands of calls to his former lover, and about married coupleIn which the husband pretended to be deaf for many years.

Note that the article about the feline organized crime group uses real photos and the name of the head of the Columbus Police Kim Jacobs, who Left retirement in 2019. However, according to Russian -speaking publications, Kim Jacobs is a man who still works in the police.

And in the photo, the heroine of another criminal story acted as a criminal trainer of the gang of cats - this is a resident of Florida Helen Staudinger, who was 92 at the time of filming. According to the agency Reuters, in March 2011, a woman was arrested for shooting at the house of her neighbor Dwight Bettner.

According to the 53-year-old victim, the old woman became interested in when he only moved to that area, and even threatened to shoot him, learning that the neighbor already had a girlfriend. From the report on the incident it follows that Bettner quarreled with Studinger when she came to his house and refused to leave, demanding a kiss. The man refused and drove her away, for which he soon paid: the old woman shot several times at his dwelling and a car from a pistol. “If my head was a little further, I would probably get into the back of my head,” Bettner said.

Image: Reuters/Marion County Sheriffs Office