A red-faced CNN anchor was fooled on live television by a prank caller impersonating a US student who had been arrested in Cairo.
The prankster phoned the studio on November 27 pretending to be Gregory Porter, a real 19-year-old student from Philadelphia who was arrested while participating in protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square and then released.
Anchor Fredricka Whitfield appeared completely fooled by the caller, who sounded legitimate at first.
He said returning to the US was like "an early Christmas present".
But the exchange came to a bizarre end when Ms Whitfield asked the caller what he had been doing the night he was arrested.
The man claimed he was "just down there looking" at the protest when the group was "grabbed by police".
He then thanked his lawyer, his mother, the US embassy in Cairo, the North shore Animal League and Baba Booey's monkey nuts.
Unfazed, Ms Whitfield asked the caller what he thought would happen after he was arrested, but the caller had hung up.
It is not the first time a prank caller had targeted CNN.
In 2006 a caller phoned during a segment on the psychological toll of the US war saying his child was having nightmares and had "vaginal fluid on the brain".
Mr Porter, a Drexel University student, was in Cairo studying at the American University when he was arrested with two other college students, Luke Gates and Derrik Sweeney, after allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails during a demonstration.
He was released and returned to the US on November 26.
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