Charlie Sheen is not dead, despite what you may have read on Twitter. But he is the victim of the latest death hoax circulating around the internet by those who unscrupulously report these things. He joins a long line of celebrities including Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Dave Matthews and Bill Cosby to name just a few. Of course, news of someone’s supposed demise that didn’t happen has been around for as long as man has been alive. Mark Twain, famed writer, once said that the news of his death was greatly exaggerated after it was rumored that he had passed on. There have even been people that the government claimed were dead while they were still alive.

Usually though it’s just a quick blurb with little details, but this hoax for Charlie was pretty detailed. It said that Sheen was killed in a snowboarding accident at one of Switzerland’s most notorious ski resorts, Zermatt, which features the most evil vertical drop around. But he didn’t go over such a cliff. Instead like the real story of Sonny Bono, Sheen was taken out by a tree (but at least it wasn’t a meat explosion) when boarding down the hill. He was said to be airlifted to the nearby hospital, but thought to have died instantly upon impact. There was even a photo of rescue crews working on him. The image proved to be a stock photo of a ski patrol instead.

Now I don’t claim to know Charlie’s sports participation beyond baseball and his daughter’s soccer, but I have no recollection of ever hearing about him snowboarding, much less risking life and limb at a dangerous place like Zermatt. Also if he had been in Switzerland, we would have heard about it, just as we did when he recently travelled to Columbia. The man can’t go anywhere without a posse reporting his location at any given moment and he’s not exactly quiet about trips he takes on Twitter. And so anyone who follows Charlie at all would not be fooled, but some were which is the goal of such scammers. In the meantime, you may want to be careful if there are emails circulating with this title as they are probably scams or pfishing attempts.

In the meanwhile, worry not. Charlie is fine and currently working on his new TV show.