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Austin Chumlee Russell (so nicknamed by a friend's father due to his resemblance to the character of Chumley the walrus in the Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons) is one of the stars of the popular reality show Pawn Stars, the resident clown of the staff at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, where he is frequently derided by the shop's owners, Rick Harrison and Richard Old Man Harrison, for being bumbling and lazy. Beginning in May 2013, a rumor was circulated on the Internet claiming that Chumlee had recently passed away from a marijuana overdose: The rumor was nothing more than a hoax, a bit of fiction promulgated in a 14 May 2013 article published on the Internet Chronicle web site, one which followed up that site's equally fictitious report from two months earlier which claimed Chumlee had been arrested for possession of seven pounds of marijuana. (The putative cause of death given in Chumlee's phony Internet Chronicle obituary, a marijuana overdose, is virtually a medical impossibility.) In March 2014, a similar spoof article published by eBuzzd (along with images of fake reaction tweets from other celebrities) spawned more false Chumlee death rumors, this time positing that the Pawn Stars personality had passed away of a heart attack: In July 2017, business2community.com revived the marijuana overdose death hoax: The real Chumlee remains alive and well, as indicated by his ongoing tweets and his appearances at his candy store in Las Vegas:
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