It's well known that Snopes has a dark side. The couple that run it also run a network of spam servers that start many of those forwarded stories in the first

It's well known that Snopes has a dark side. The couple that run it also run a network of spam servers that start many of those forwarded stories in the first place, ensuring they'll always have business. (I didn't come up with that claim, but the source of it isn't very popular on this site, so I'll just give its number instead of a URL: 250).