LOS ANGELES -- A video that purported to show Michael Jackson hopping out of the Los Angeles Coroner's van alive and well was a hoax.
German Television station "RTL" claims to have posted the video as an experiment to see how quickly rumors can spread online.
Heike Schultz, a spokeswoman for RTL, told CNN that the company issued a press release before they did the video. However, once it was posted, the video spread like wildfire, she said.
More than 880,000 people have viewed the YouTube version of the video.
Watch the bogus video:


Jackson's sudden death on June 25 created a massive influx of Web traffic, causing outages on most major sites.