40 Wild Rumors That People Thought Were Fake, Until They Turned Out True

Harry Markopolos was working for a Boston investment firm when his boss told him a huge hedge fund was producing incredible returns. He wanted Markopolos to reverse-engineer its trading strategy and revenue streams so the firm could duplicate results. Within four hours he mathematically proved the fund was a fraud and reported it to the SEC who ignored him.

10 years later Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was shut down for being a giant Ponzi scheme.

When Courtney Love said if you get invited to a hotel meeting with Harvey Weinstein, “don’t go”.

John Lennon's assertion that the US government was spying on him and listening to his phone calls.
He sounded paranoid and full of himself at the time, but turned out to be completely correct.

Rumours circled about Jimmy Savile being a pedophile for years but most people assumed he was a funny old eccentric and since he raised so many millions for charity no serious investigation was done until after he died.

Turns out he was the tip of a very sordid iceberg.

Cases of widespread and systemic child s*x ab*se by Roman Catholic priests as portrayed in the movie Spotlight.

They really did bury all those unsold ET cartridges in the desert.

The political system of the United States of America has been hacked by a consortium of extremely wealthy businessmen who want to control all of the money, and enslave the general population of the country.

In high school, a friend of mine got suspended for a week for spreading a rumor that his cousin was pregnant. She came from a really wealthy family who had a lot of pull in the school, which was catholic of course. She actually almost got him expelled because of it.

Guess what happened five months later? lol


Edit: A baby happened.

That the president of Korea was taking orders from a secret shaman who was also extorting millions of dollars out of companies like Samsung.

Bill Cosby being a r*pist. When it first "rumored" I was so confused.

Soylent green was indeed people.

When it was leaked that Britney was being held against her will for refusing to perform. A lawyer or paralegal had left a rambling voicemail about it and it leaked. I thought for sure this was fake, but it turned out to be real.

One of my friends in High School was accused of hacking into the gradebook program and changing his grades and attendance. They dragged him out of class and held him in the office in a little room for the remainder of the day, trying to sweat him out to get him to confess, as they had no actual evidence *at all* that he had done anything. They wouldn't even let him go to the bathroom.

All they had was that one of his teachers takes attendance and does grades on paper, then enters them into gradebook at the end of the day or week, and he noticed that some of his stuff had changed. Aside from that, they had no proof at all that he had actually done anything.

He plead innocent on the whole deal, claiming that maybe it was a database error or whatever, or that the teacher simply forgot they made the change, or that someone had hacked in and made the changes on his stuff as a prank or revenge or something.

After they couldn't get anything out of him the first day, they started holding him in the office all day in the same fashion until the third day when someone called his parents and warned them of what was happening (I think it was one of his friends. Don't quite remember). Within an hour his dad showed up, tore the Principal a new a*****e, threatened to arrest him for abuse (he was some kinda upper-up guy in State Police), and took his son home.

They actually ended up suing the school, over the mistreatment of the kid, as they literally spent days accusing him and threatening him with various punishments if he didn't come clean and such, refusing to let him use the restroom, not letting him have lunch, and basically trying to make him break and admit to a crime they had no evidence he committed. Settled for a pretty large chunk of money, if I remember correctly...


He did do it, though. He totally did hack his grades and attendance. He was just good enough to not leave any evidence behind.

Crash Gate: Nelson Piquet Jr being told by the Renault F1 team to intentionally crash his car into a wall in order to benefit his team mate Fernando Alonso at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

It was a wild speculation at first in 2008, until Piquet was unceremoniously sacked in 2009 and spilled the beans about it. I linked the wiki article to save typing.

Donald Trump is actually a candidate for president in America. I remember people in my country joking about it when the first rumors came.

Justin Timberlake being a tool for yearssss and finally getting the public side eye he deserves.

Mayor Rob Ford smokes (or rather smoked) cr*ck.

There were no WMDs.

British comedians joke about Jimmy Saville having an interest in young girls, some years before his death.

A 'prolific' s*x offender is an understatement.

That Liberace was gay. Did not see that one coming. I mean women loved him.