Online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anyone to update its vast amount of information, issued an apology to Sinbad over the weekend after a posting on the site suggested the comedian had died of a heart attack Wednesday morning.
The news appeared to have confirmed rumors of his death that had begun the previous Saturday, according to Sinbad’s brother and manager, Mark Adkins.
Between Saturday and Wednesday, Adkins thought the rumors had died down. But once the posting was entered onto Sinbad’s Wikipedia page Wednesday, the rumor caught fire again and spread out among his fans, colleagues, and even reached his own daughter.
"Somebody vandalized the page," Wikipedia spokeswoman Sandra Ordonez told E! Online Friday. "Whoever did this was obviously a prankster. I don't think they did this because they thought he [was dead]."
The false death rumor remained on the site for about 30 minutes before a volunteer administrator became aware of the situation and yanked it down. The prankster, however, sent out an email blast Thursday that contained a link to the version of the page that included the death rumor, explained Ordonez.
To prevent anyone else from “killing” Sinbad on Wikipedia, the site has blocked his page from further edits by anyone —"for at least a good while," Ordonez said.
As for the hacker, Ordonez doesn’t have the person’s name, but she was able to track down the user’s IP address. That person is now blocked from accessing the site, Ordonzed confirmed.