KFC Says Viral Story About Guy Who Duped Them Into Year of Free Food Is Fake

Fake news strikes again.

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Image via Getty/davidhills

fake

Hey, you know that thing people do, where they see a seemingly sketchy story on Twitter but share it anyway with some commentary in the name of RT's? That happened again.

A viral story about a purported student who allegedly conned his way into free food from KFC for a whole damn year has continued to spread in recent days, per Business Insider South Africa.

Should arrest KFC & employees for they're dumbness....lol his stomach was good for a year...& yall was dumb for a year lol...

— tamppa (@tamppa) May 13, 2019

The (not true) story goes something like this: A South African man currently enrolled in university had somehow managed to obtain the free food at various locations by pretending to be a quality inspector from corporate office. Despite the story's upfront unlikeliness (a year?!?!), it spread as far as CBS News before getting an official confirmation of fakeness from the chicken brand.

A KFC spokesperson confirmed in a subsequent statement that, due to the company's "strict operational processes," the story was an apparent fabrication. "Any unauthorized individuals posing as KFC team members in our restaurants and head office would have been picked up immediately," the spokesperson said Tuesday.

The company also shared several tweets in response to viral commentary on the story Monday, all pointing out that people had simply been duped by another unfortunate example of the fabricated nonsense machine.

We totally would fam, if only it weren’t fake news doe. 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️ https://t.co/Z0V4psWanL

— KFC South Africa (@KFCSA) May 14, 2019

We'd give him all of the props if it were true but unfortunately it isn't, cause this is fake news. 🤦‍♀️Team KFC|SM

— KFC South Africa (@KFCSA) May 14, 2019

Fake is as good as this story gets. As legendary as it would be we can confirm that this is false. We haven’t kept the secret recipe ‘secret’ for this long, only to be duped by a student 😉 pic.twitter.com/32CE5OXVTA

— KFC South Africa (@KFCSA) May 14, 2019

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