{"id":811287,"date":"2026-03-14T05:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T05:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/811287\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T05:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T05:24:16","slug":"buccaneers-were-duped-by-fan-impersonating-one-of-their-star-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/811287\/","title":{"rendered":"Buccaneers were &#8216;duped&#8217; by fan impersonating one of their star players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were no better than the thousands of fans who got fooled by an impostor pretending to be standout second-year player Emeka Egbuka.<\/p>\n<p>The Buccaneers wide receiver was at the center of a social media firestorm this week that he did not cause. An account posing as Egbuka had asked, \u201cIs CTE even real?\u201d The account has since been suspended. The post got enough attention that the Buccaneers\u2019 PR team felt the need to respond and state that the account did not actually belong to Egbuka.<\/p>\n<p>Before the fake Egbuka account was scrubbed from X, the Buccaneers\u2019 team account apparently tagged it in posts \u201cnearly 60 times.\u201d According to Front Office Sports\u2019 Ryan Glasspiegel, the Buccaneers\u2019 social media team genuinely got \u201cduped\u201d by the impostor. You can check for yourself <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/search?q=%20%20%40EgbukaEmeka%20from%3ABuccaneers%20&amp;src=typed_query\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/x.com\/search?q=%20%20%40EgbukaEmeka%20from%3ABuccaneers%20&amp;src=typed_query\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Egbuka does not appear to have his own active X account, or at least one made aware to the public. <\/p>\n<p>In all fairness to the Buccaneers, the ones responsible for tagging the fake Egbuka account were probably just a social media manager or a couple of interns. But you\u2019d think someone from the billion-dollar organization would catch the mistake eventually.<\/p>\n<p>The Bucs could have at least been responsible for verifying each player\u2019s personal accounts to avoid such a gaffe, particularly for players like Egbuka, who\u2019s expected to be Tampa Bay\u2019s top receiving option <a href=\"https:\/\/larrybrownsports.com\/football\/mike-evans-leaving-buccaneers-49ers-free-agency\/744823\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/larrybrownsports.com\/football\/mike-evans-leaving-buccaneers-49ers-free-agency\/744823\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with Mike Evans headed West<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In his first NFL season, Egbuka led the Buccaneers with 63 catches for 938 yards and 6 touchdowns across 17 games.<\/p>\n<p>H\/T <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcsports.com\/nfl\/profootballtalk\/rumor-mill\/news\/the-buccaneers-had-tagged-the-fake-emeka-egbuka-account-nearly-60-times\" type=\"link\" id=\"https:\/\/www.nbcsports.com\/nfl\/profootballtalk\/rumor-mill\/news\/the-buccaneers-had-tagged-the-fake-emeka-egbuka-account-nearly-60-times\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Pro Football Talk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were no better than the thousands of fans who got fooled by an impostor&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2077],"tags":[211,702,7,6,704,250,2597,2596],"class_list":{"0":"post-811287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa-bay-buccaneers","8":"tag-buccaneers","9":"tag-emeka-egbuka","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-tampa-bay","13":"tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers","14":"tag-tampabay","15":"tag-tampabaybuccaneers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116225865589042703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}