When a teenager in Southport, England, attacked a children’s dance class with a knife and killed three girls, it shocked the British public.
Shortly afterwards, a supposedly American website published the name of the attacker. It was “Ali al-Shakati,” a “17-year-old asylum seeker,” reported a website called Channel3 Now.
Claims that the suspect was a Muslim migrant sparked a week of unrest across England.
But these claims were false: “Ali al-Shakati” probably did not even exist, and Channel3 Now was not an established US news channel, but a little-known website that published sensational news under the guise of an American television channel.
In response to the disinformation, British authorities released the name of the real suspect in the knife attack: Axel Rudakubana, 17, who was born in Wales to Rwandan immigrants. He is neither a Muslim nor a migrant. But that did not stop the unrest.
A VOA investigation into the origin of the misleading article found two Facebook pages belonging to Channel3 Now “journalists.” The broadcaster has since publicly apologized for the misidentification.
One of the site’s contributors may be using the stolen identity of a Canadian race car driver. The other, a man from Pakistan, has at times garnered significant traction by sharing real but extremely polarizing U.S. news.
VOA’s findings suggest that the website uses sensationalist headlines to attract readers and generate revenue – a conclusion also reached by a BBC investigation.
Suspicions that there was a Russian connection behind the false identification arose after a British journalist discovered that the first videos on Channel3 Now’s YouTube page showed car racing in Izhevsk, a city in central Russia.
VOA found that one of these short racing videos was also posted on the Russian social media site Odnoklassniki by a man named Andrey Argyshev.
The titles of two other videos, shown in a screenshot of Channel3 Now’s YouTube account – which has since been deleted along with the videos it contains – refer to racing drivers who are friends with Argyshev on social media.
A 2013 photo album on Argyshev’s page on the Russian social network VKontakte matches the detailed titles of two other videos seen in the screenshot. The video titles and screenshot suggest they are from 2013.
In comments to the BBC, a Channel3 Now employee denied any links to Russia and said the racing videos were posted before the site was bought by a previous Russian owner “many years ago”.
VOA’s dating of the Russian racing videos to 2012 and 2013 lends credence to this explanation. No more recent links to Russia were found on the website.
However, Russian efforts to create unrest in the United States and Western Europe have been extensively documented by Western intelligence agencies.
In an earlier investigation, VOA reported that the Kremlin commissioned the creation of a large number of social media accounts and fake news sites to spread its narratives.
In response to the unrest in Southport, the Russian Embassy in the UK stated via the messaging app Telegram: “Russia does not interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states.”
Interestingly, however, VOA has discovered a more recent connection between Channel3 Now and auto racing.
The website has only one named author: James Lawley. He has a Facebook page and the @Channel3Now account on social network X is called “James Channel3Now.” According to Facebook, Lawley lives in Los Angeles.
Using reverse image search and facial comparison software, VOA determined that the Facebook photo shows a real person named James Lawley – but is actually a young Canadian racing driver and student from Nova Scotia.
VOA tried to contact Lawley through the head of his racing team. In a WhatsApp message, the director wrote: “Probably identity theft.” He promised that the real Lawley would contact VOA, but the racing driver never responded.
Pakistan
Behind all the glitz, Channel3 Now’s clearest connections seem to be those to Pakistan.
Marc Owen Jones, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, pointed out that a Facebook page for the website stated that there were two managers in Pakistan and one in the United States. The page has since been deleted.
The site’s only other identifiable journalist, Farhan Asif, claims on Facebook to be from New York. In an X-account linked to Channel3 Now, he describes himself as a “crime reporter” covering the United States.
All other evidence suggests that he is from Pakistan and probably lives there.
On Linkedin and Rozee.pk, two professional social networks, Asif describes himself as an employee of an outsourcing company in Lahore. Asif did not respond to requests for comment.
The Channel3 Now website has also changed its name several times throughout its history. Prior to last year, it was known as Fox3 Now, Fox5 Now and Fox7 Now, which led to an arbitration case brought by Fox Media LLC.
In August 2023, a governing body ordered that the web addresses associated with those names be transferred to Fox Media, likely forcing the site to rename itself Channel3 Now. The earliest archived versions of the site VOA found under that name date from September 2023.
Development of a fake
The combination of fake and other fraudulent “journalists” and the nature of the stories spread on the website suggest that Channel3 Now is about money rather than ideological motives.
Advertising seems to play a major role in the site’s focus. As Ryan McBeth, a blogger who writes about disinformation and cybersecurity, noted, Channel3 Now is full of advertisements.
“All of these ads make me believe this is a fake news site whose purpose is to sell outrage in order to sell ad views,” he said in a video blog.
This was also the explanation given to the BBC by a supposedly American employee of Channel3 Now: that it was a commercial enterprise whose aim was to make money by publishing large quantities of articles. The site’s strong focus on crime stories reinforces this conclusion.
The employee, who introduced himself as “Kevin,” also said the site has 30 employees – mostly freelancers – in the US, UK, India and Pakistan.
This may not be entirely credible given the low quality of Channel3 Now’s content. However, the site can simulate real journalism in some cases.
In February 2023, Lawley published an article on Fox7 Now about the suicide of a teenager in Oklahoma that was shared 15 times and commented on by several real people, including the teenager’s mother.
In November 2023, Asif made two posts on Facebook that included links to a Channel3 Now article about the suspect in the high-profile shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont. The news was real, but the goal was likely engagement.
However, the Southport story seems to have brought too much attention to Channel3 Now.
Two days after publication, the site apologized for publishing the suspect’s incorrect name.
“We take full responsibility for this error and are committed to avoiding such errors in the future,” wrote the unnamed author.
