You got conned, CNBC! Strangers pose as laid-off Twitter employees -Rahul LIGMA and Daniel Johnson, trick mainstream media

Since Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, there has been chaos all over the social media platforms. Similarly, two random men pranked the American business news channel, CNBC, who posed as Twitter employees and claimed that they were fired by the company’s new owner Elon Musk.

 

 

The two men acted as Twitter employees who were fired by Elon Musk and were spotted with boxes near the entrance of the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. When they were asked, one of them who identified as ‘Daniel Johnson said, "I am a data engineer. We were having a lot of problems. And then Elon came and pulled the plug on the whole team."

 

Further, he said he worked at Twitter for 6 years. “I respect Elon Musk but the kind of stuff that he said lately is concerning. I own a Tesla. How am I going to make car payments,” he said. The other guy who called himself as "Rahul Ligma", Yes, you read it right. Ligma! Notably, Ligma is a joke about balls because Ligma sounds like ‘lick my balls’.made some hilarious yet bizzare statements. "It makes me worry about the future of our democracy… the future of celebrity conservatorship. I mean, when Britney [Spears] happened…" Rahul Ligma claimed.

 

He continued, "Michelle Obama wouldn’t have happened if Elon Musk owned Twitter. Obama in 2008 wouldn’t have happened without Elon Musk owning Twitter…I even own a Tesla, man. I’m a big fan of clean energy, climate change, even free speech too."

 

A handful of outlets, like CNBC and Bloomberg, fell for the prank. Both outlets issued statements and changed their stories. One of the more prominent posts came from CNBC's Deirdre Bosa, who posted that an "entire team of data engineers" had been let go.

 

“They are visibly shaken. Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments…To be clear – I don’t think the Tesla was top of mind, I think Elon Musk was,” she further claimed.

 

 

A user was quick to respond to this tweet and said...You got conned!

 

Elon Musk being Elon Musk did not waste any opportunity to troll the US media for failing to verify the identity of the supposed ‘Twitter employees.’ He tweeted, "Ligma Johnson had it coming (or rathercumming)."

 

 

 

Earlier, Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired top executives of Twitter Inc. including CEO Parag Agrawal and its legal Head Vijaya Gadde. This came after Musk took over the ownership of the micro-blogging platform on October 28. Besides Agrawal and Gadde, the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ned Segal was also fired for misleading the Tesla CEO and the investors about fake accounts on Twitter.