‘Gold Rush’ star Parker Schnabel wasn’t sentenced to life in prison

Claim:

A court sentenced Parker Schnabel, star of the Discovery Channel reality TV series “Gold Rush,” to life in prison.

Rating:

A rumor that social media users shared online in April and May 2025 claimed a court had sentenced Parker Schnabel, star of the Discovery Channel reality TV series “Gold Rush,” to life in prison.

For example, on May 4, a TikTok user posted two videos displaying a thumbnail image of a man broadcasting a story on Fox News. The clip featured the caption, “Parker Schnabel From Gold Rush Sentenced To Life Imprisonment.” The videos received a combined total of more than 700,000 views. Other users also shared the same claim on Facebook, TikTok and X.

(@top.review11/TikTok)

However, the rumor about a court sentencing Schnabel to a prison sentence was false. Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no reports from news media outlets — including Fox News — about this matter. A spokesperson for Discovery Channel has not yet responded to a request asking if they wished to comment about the untrue claim.

How the Schnabel-prison claim possibly started

According to the search engines’ results, the rumor about Schnabel and life imprisonment possibly originated on YouTube. On April 27, a manager of the Top Rewind YouTube channel published a video (archived) with the title “Parker Schnabel From Gold Rush Sentenced To Life Imprisonment.” Part of the same video later appeared in the aforementioned TikTok videos.

The clip — the earliest securely dated one our research uncovered — received more than 259,000 views and featured generative artificial-intelligence elements, including in its scripting and voice narration. The YouTube video displayed an “altered or synthetic content” disclaimer specifying that “sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.” The clip did not contain any other notices sometimes found with similar videos, such as a disclaimer that its content was fictional. A manager for the channel, which did not feature an email address, has not yet responded to a comment asking whether they originated the rumor.

The video tells the fictional story of Schnabel facing federal charges related to dozens of “willful environmental violations” for mining gold. The AI-generated narrator begins the clip:

Parker Schnabel, the face of “Gold Rush,” the youngest prodigy to ever pull millions from frozen Earth, is no longer behind the controls of an excavator. He’s behind locked doors. After a crushing verdict in one of the most shocking environmental cases in mining history, Schnabel’s gold empire has been halted cold and the sentence handed down, life imprisonment. No parole, no appeals left.

Later in the video, the script — which the AI text-detection website Copyleaks identified as likely generated with AI — includes a moment when the narrator talks of a “twist” involving Schnabel “vanishing from the spotlight,” and perhaps “negotiating restitution” or being in “protective custody,” instead of serving his prison sentence. The last line of the narration and script reads, “So, the question is, does Parker come back stronger than ever, or does this chapter mark the end of a golden run?”

In recent months, YouTube creators also promoted false rumors including “1 MINUTE AGO: Heartbreaking New Details About Parker Schnabel,” “Tony Beets And Mike Beets From ‘Gold Rush’ Sentenced To Life Imprisonment” and “‘Pawn Stars’ Rick Harrison Sentenced To Life in Prison, Goodbye Forever.”

Such made-up stories — often featuring inspiring or shocking tales about famous people from the worlds of entertainment, politics and sports — drive social media engagement, potentially with the goal of Facebook page managers or YouTube creators one day selling their pages or accounts after earning high follower or subscriber counts. The content also possibly allows for monetization, whether through the ads on a website or directly included with YouTube videos.

For further reading, a previous fact check examined the false rumor about a court sentencing Schnabel’s “Gold Rush” costars Mike and Tony Beets to life in prison. Another article also investigated a general rumor claiming Schnabel or another member of the “Gold Rush” cast said they said they faked the show.