The ruling pronouncing Frisco, Texas teen Karmelo Anthony guilty of the April 2025 murder of another teenager, Austin Metcalf, has been one of the most divisive verdicts the country has seen in recent times.
A lot of misinformation spread around the case, given the interest the ruling generated. While the majority of such false claims concerned the GiveSendGo fundraiser that the family of Karmelo Anthony launched, a fair few also made fake claims linking celebrities to the case. The first was Cardi B allegedly donating money to Anthony after the rapper seemingly put out a social media post questioning the judgment.
Now, a similar claim has gone viral concerning NBA legend and former Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James. A video is viral on social media in which LeBron purportedly pledges to wire $500,000 to the family of Karmelo Anthony as they consider appealing the guilty ruling and the subsequent 35-year sentence.
LeBron James Fake Video Spreads
The video seemed to have first appeared on the X account FADE (@FadeMFx), which had around 10,000 followers at the time of this writing. The account made a post late on Saturday night, which featured Karmelo Anthony’s mugshot and a video of LeBron James.
The video was captioned: “Lebron James revealed that he spoke with the parents of 19-year-old Karmelo Anthony and he will be donating $500k to help them with an APPEAL to bring Karmelo home.” It also had a fabricated quote from LeBron: “I believe everyone deserves a 2nd chance, all he did was defend himself. I’m gonna wire them $500k tomorrow.”
However, as actually watching the video makes it clear, LeBron says nothing related to Karmelo Anthony in the video. He is discussing the NFL and his favorite players in the video, and nothing related to Karmelo Anthony was said in it.
In fact, amid the over a million views on the video, X added a community note underneath, noting: “This video is fake and uses fabricated audio of LeBron James. There is no evidence LeBron James has spoken about this case or pledged $500,000. “
Judge Defends Controversiial Verdict
Collin County, Texas judge John Roach Jr., who pronounced the Karmelo Anthony verdict, has faced criticism amid the backlash around the 35-year sentences handed to the 19-year-old. However, he has defended the decision, noting that he has only “followed the law.”
“I know I made people mad but I’m not here to make them happy either,” Roach said in an interview with a local broadcaster.
“I wouldn’t know Mr. Metcalf prior to this trial if he walked up to me and said ‘hello,” he said. “As long as I follow the law, I sleep well at night.”
He also defended the jury saying that they not the verdict correct “because they were picked based upon the law, they listened to the facts, it happened in this courtroom, and they got a verdict.”
