As many suspected when the crew from FGearTV shared a video of a 12-year old boy from the UK named Callum, who purportedly bought three Ferrari models including a F355, a 458 Italia and a 599GTO, after selling an app to Google for £8.5 million (or $8.5 million, it wasn’t made clear) at the age of just 9, the story was nothing more than a hoax.

When we told you about Callum’s story, we laid out the points that didn’t quite add up, including the total lack of details about his million-dollar deal with the internet giant known as Google, and an older video from FGearTV that was brought to our attention by Carscoops reader Shawn, in which Callum said his grandparents gave him the F355. Earlier today, another one of our readers named Tom, posted a lengthy comment in which he also broke down the story, and stated the following: “While it can be funny, none of us like feeling like we’re being taken for a ride. This story would be fantastic if it was true and I would have no problem with a very successful teenager investing in automotive exotica.”

The people who run FGearTV came out with the truth today through a follow up video with Callum and a statement in which they say, it was a harmless joke they played with internet readers, and supposedly, even their own interviewer, Yusef Mamoojee, who they calom, was completely unaware.

Before we continue, it’s probably best you read their statement on the hoax:

From FGearTV:

“It’s been a week since we uploaded the video about Callum and his 3 Ferrari’s and we decided it was now time to tell you the real story.

The video was filmed for two reasons. First as an update to the original video we did about Callum and his Ferrari 355 (which belongs to his father) and secondly to have a bit of fun with the Presenter, Yusef who thought the whole thing was real. He’s not acting, he really did think Callum was for real.

What makes the whole thing such great viewing is that it was all unscripted and unplanned. We bumped into Callum and Paul at a recent event and in the video Callum was making things up as he went along. The guy is amazing and one of the nicest kids you could possibly meet!!!

And yes… he really is 12 years old.

Contrary to what has been written on websites and forums around the world, no one is promoting anything, selling anything or trying to be deceitful in anyway. In fact fGearTV is slowly winding down as we are now concentrating on another video channel.

It was just a bit of harmless fun that went a little viral.

We hope you enjoyed it and weren’t offended in any way.

Many thanks to Callum, Paul and Yusef and Paul.

The video above contains additional footage which should explain everything.

Remember, the Presenter thinks it’s all real and is not in on the joke.

Best wishes to all.

The fGear team”

Putting aside the fact that we question the claim that this episode was completely unscripted and spontaneous, one might say, if FGearTV wanted to do a harmless joke, they could have simply shared the video as a whole the first time and not wait a week and more than 210,000 views (and paid advertisements) later to reveal the truth.

All that said, what do you think; was it a harmless/funny joke or a bad hoax?

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