News Report Claiming Samsung Hired People to Pretend to Be Fans at the Galaxy S6 Launching Event in Shanghai, China Found Groundless

Samsung investigated a media report on April 3 that claimed people were temporarily hired and paid to attend the Galaxy S6 launching event in Shanghai, China and later found that the story was totally groundless and bogus.

The news article contended that part-timers, acting as “fanboys”of Samsung smartphones, participated in the launching event. However, our findings have indicated that under no circumstances has anyone been hired or given money to attend the event. In fact, the more than 1,100 attendees, including consumers and industry officials, have all been formally invited to the Shanghai Culture Square where the event took place.

In the wake of the investigation, the media outlet that broke the story corroborated our findings and soon retracted the erroneous story. Separately, we are seriously considering whether to request the media outlet to take further action in the matter by issuing a correction. We will also continue our efforts to find out how this story came to be.