In late April 2026, a rumor claiming that a Florida man was arrested after trying to "baptize" an alligator inside of a Waffle House restaurant circulated online.
Some social media users posted a purported mugshot of the man, allegedly shared by Florida news outlet WFOR, along with the claim that the man tried using a pitcher of iced tea to perform the baptism.
(Jarred Jermaine on Facebook)
There was no evidence that the claim was true or that the mugshot included in the social media posts was authentic. Instead, the rumor originated as a satirical post from an account that identified itself as "comedy."
A search of Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo returned no results for credible news outlets reporting on such a story.
A Google reverse image search of the purported social media post from WFOR's account returned only other social media accounts posting the same alleged screenshot, all from mid-February.
(Google)
WFOR is a broadcast channel in Miami, Florida, officially branded as CBS Miami.
The station's social media accounts are labeled as "CBS Miami" and not "WFOR4NEWS" as of this writing. A search of CBS Miami's social accounts for a post matching the screenshot shared in the claim returned no relevant results.
A search of the newspaper archive Newspapers.com and the CBS Miami website also returned no results for such a story.
The image appeared to originate from a Facebook account that shared a multitude of alleged stories accompanied by fake imagery similar to the one shown in the claim. The account posted (archived) the claim about a Florida man baptizing an alligator on Feb. 12, 2026.
However, the same account posted similar claims around the same time as the post in question, all allegedly from the same purported WFOR4NEWS account. Other purported headlines included a Florida woman arrested for starting a brush fire after "using a flamethrower to clear a spider web from her porch" and a man attempting to trade an alligator for beer at a store.
Like the "baptizing" claim, these posts included alleged mugshots, but there was no evidence that the reports or images were authentic. The mugshots appeared to have been created using generative artificial intelligence, though we couldn't independently verify this.
All of the above posts from the Facebook account in question were labeled with the hashtags "comedy," "satire" and "for entertainment only," indicating they were intended as jokes.
Further, the page from which these posts originated featured a disclaimer that read, "This page features satire and parody stories that are exaggerated, developing fictional — created for entertainment purposes only."
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources calling their output humorous or satirical.