ISIS Threat To Met Museum Was Fake, Reports Say

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A terrorist threat against the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been debunked, FBI counterterrorism officials told reporters Thursday.

A photo of a man wearing a scarf emblazoned with the ISIS logo outside the Upper East Side museum sparked fears when it surface in January, but the image is nothing but a photoshopped fake, the New York Daily News reported.

FBI counterterrorism officials thought the image was likely a fake when it was posted, but wanted to be 100 percent sure, the Daily News reported. Officials were able to identify the man in the photo by using the museum's security camera footage and get his credit card information, according to the report. It turns out the man was visiting the museum as a tourist from Sardinia, Italy and was not affiliated with any terror groups, FBI officials told reporters.

"He put his photo on social media," special agent in charge of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division for the New York office Bryan Paarmann said, as reported by the Daily News. "ISIS took his photo and superimposed their logo on the scarf, making it appear they had an operative in front of the Met. They hijacked his image — but in reality it was a tourist."

Read the full Daily News article here.

Photo by Maria Cormack-Pitts/Patch