Love Island’s Sherif Lanre has fallen victim to a death hoax after a sick troll claimed he had died in a house fire.
Sherif, who left the villa last month after breaking the rules, had received condolence messages from fans after a different Instagram account claimed he had passed away.
The fake post read: “RIP my boy Sherif. My man has [expletive] died in a house fire after he left the hot water tap on and spent the last hours of his life suffering horribly.
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“Hope his family are OK after this shocking news, rip in peace my bro #blessupmyg. (sic)”
The post was flooded with a string of ‘RIP’ comments.
But then, the troll told followers they could win a gift card by commenting ‘RIP’ on Sherif’s official Instagram.
They added: “If we can all pay our upmost respects by going onto his account @sherif_lanre and commenting how sad we are.
“(Everyone make sure to follow, like and tag your friends for a gift card giveaway) #loveisland #dead #freeclout. (sic)”
However, a spokesperson for Sherif told Metro that he is safe and police are investigating the hoax.
Sherif left the Love Island villa last month after he broke the rules.
At the time, Sherif said in a statement: “In a case of poor judgement, I broke the villa rules and as a result agreed with the producers that it was best for me to leave the villa.
“I regret that I didn’t conduct myself in the right way and, as a 20 year old guy, it’s something I know I will take on board and learn from. I really enjoyed my time in the villa and look forward to catching up with everyone on the outside.”
He later spoke to The Sun and claimed he quit the show because of an insensitive joke he made about fellow Love Islander Molly-Mae after accidentally hurting her.
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He told the publication in an interview: “I was kicked out of the villa because I was play fighting with Molly-Mae and joking around with Tommy and Molly-Mae collectively.
“We were throwing karate kicks at each other, fake karate kicks, and one of them accidentally caught her in the groin, very lightly. Although shocked, she wasn’t injured, and I went on to use some pretty foul language to describe the incident.”
The Sun claimed he dropped the C-bomb, when he described his kick on Molly-Mae as a “[bleep]-punt”.
He also said it was “correct” of ITV to handle the situation the way they did and apologised for the language he used, as he hadn’t realised “how insulting it is to women”.
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