This week the Internet was shocked by the insane story of a Florida police officer who tried to make nice with a woman he tased by sending her a cake with the words; “Sorry I Tased You.”

According to the Pensacola News Journal an off duty sheriff’s deputy stole a woman’s sweet tea at the apartment complex where she worked. When she approached him to retrieve her beverage the officer shot her with his Taser. To top it off the man pinned her down and forcefully removed the taser prods.

The story goes on to explain how to try and make amends for the horrific act of taser on tea brutality the officer later made the woman the cake. Hope she likes vanilla frosting and sparks. Apparently the woman didn’t appreciate the officer’s baking ability as she still filed a lawsuit against him. A ready baked piece of justice served! Just one problem. The story is FAKE!!

It turns out the Pensacola News Journal is one of those “fake but not funny” fake news outlets. They like to churn out wild, yet plausible false news items for a hungry Internet eager to devour them. This strategy seems to have paid off as the hilarious looking cake image and accompanying story was shared by legitimate journalists from Fox News, The New York Post and countless hard news websites. These are the times we live in. One TV news outlet even went as far as to recreate the cake for themselves!

The REAL story behind this is actually pretty interesting. According to Gizmodo two officers from Barnstable, Massachusetts (NOT Florida, way to stereotype) Jay Maloney and Katie Ross responded to a call on New Year’s Day in 2014 around 1:30AM. A father and son were getting into a fight. The officers tackled the son who was becoming violent and resisting arrest. The rookie officer Ross reached out and grabbed the guy at the exact moment her partner Maloney deployed his taser. Whoops!

Unfortunately for her the taser probes went right into her hand. After the shock she was out of work for a month. When she returned Officer Maloney baked her the “I’m sorry” cake. This explains why the stick figures on the cake are of two police officers! The pair seems to be amused by the whole fake tea thief taser story. Ross says, “Everyone wants to take credit for Maloney’s awesomeness.”

Although he is not sure how it got spread over the Internet, Officer Maloney took to Facebook to claim ownership of the cake, saying; “Everyone's trying to steal my cake! The media doesn't care to do a simple Google search to see the cake has been on the Internet for a year longer than the incident. This was an incident between coworkers, I made Katie Ross the cake!” Get tased? Nothing a good cake can’t fix!