Claiming to be “every parent’s worst nightmare”, The Facebook Republic Army has been known for over a year to scour Facebook looking for parties to gatecrash. With their own “tour bus”, washing machine escapades and promoted by many national UK newspapers for over a year, today, the Times confirmed the “The Facebook Republic Army” are a hoax.
“The Army” would wait for gatecrasher stories to appear in the press and then phone the newspapers to claim responsibility for them. The ringleader, 25 year old plumber Steve O’Brian (pictured right) confessed “It was a bit of a laugh. But it is now getting to the stage where it could be damaging for my job. I am looking yobbish, and I want to set the record straight.”
As recent as this week, three national papers including the Mail and Telegraph reported that a £1 million home in Brighton had been “trashed” by the Army. In March of this year, after a 15-year-old’s “MTV Sweet 16” party was crashed and the family dog given ecstasy tablets, Mr O’Brien’s brother Shaun was quoted as saying: “I saw one man having sex with three women on the washing machine. At about 2am I went into one of the bedrooms and saw two boys having sex. We all got involved.” With a quote like that, you can see why the newspapers took the bait.
O’Brien told the Times, “I know at some point this story has to end, but at the moment I am being offered a lot of money for the same bullsh*t tale.”
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