Hoax Museum Blog: Identity/Imposters

Fake Lawyer — Here's a pretty outrageous con. A convicted drug dealer has been caught posing as a lawyer and operating a Central Florida law firm while still in the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Evidently he only has to spend the night in jail, but every morning he wakes up, hops into his Mercedes, and drives off to his day job as a fake lawyer, from which he's been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wonder if he'll act as his own lawyer at his trial.
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003.   Comments (0)

Black People Love Us — Black People Love Us: Sally and Johnny (a white couple) just want everyone to know that the black community loves them.
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003.   Comments (0)

Rent-a-Negro — Rent a Negro: Are you embarrassed by the lack of racial diversity at your social events? Then this website has the answer. Just 'rent a negro' and you too can appear multicultural in the eyes of your friends, all without ever having to challenge your own white privilege.
Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2003.   Comments (1)

9/11 Hoax on LiveJournal — A hoax involving 9/11 has just been exposed on LiveJournal. It appears there was once a LiveJournal user named Flashman, aka Anthony Joseph Pereira. But on Sept. 11 a friend of his, Rhyein, posted that he had died rushing into one of the burning World Trade Center Towers trying to save people. This caused an outpouring of grief from the LiveJournal community. But some people began to become suspicious when they realized that Anthony Joseph Pereira was never listed in the official lists of the 9/11 dead. To make a long story short, it now appears that Flashman never existed. He was invented by Rhyein. Anthony Joseph Pereira was in reality the original name of Joe Perry of Aerosmith, her favorite band.
Details of the initial exposure can be found here at superdeluxe's weblog, though it was a LJ user named tupelo who did the actual exposing. Another LJ user named Bubba Ray then compared the IP addresses used by Rhyein and Flashman and found that they matched. The journal of Flashman himself has unfortunately recently been deleted (by rhyein). This brings back memories of Kaycee Nicole Swenson.
Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2003.   Comments (0)


A Fake McCoy — The real McCoy has her identity stolen. Fake McCoy still at large.
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003.   Comments (0)

Is Peter Lynds a Hoax? — Recently a 27-year-old New Zealander named Peter Lynds has been getting a lot of attention. He's been hailed as the next Einstein because he's come up with an entirely new theory of time. And he's done this without having any formal qualifications as a physicist. But suggestions that Peter Lynds may be nothing more than a hoax have been cropping up. Some have even doubted the guy's existence. The Guardian investigated and found that Lynds was real enough, but that his work hasn't exactly wowed everyone in the Physics community. And that thing about him being the next Einstein... that may trace back to an offhand remark by Lynds himself.

Update 8/17/03: A visitor has posted an interesting theory that Peter Lynds is really a 17-year-old radio student who's been sending out press releases about himself under the pseudonym of Brooke Jones. I guess Peter Lynds could resolve this whole issue by just making a public appearance somewhere. Of course, it could be that he's waiting for an invitation.
Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2003.   Comments (0)

Long-Lost Daughter Hoax — Woman cruelly poses as long-lost daughter of couple. Who knows what deranged motive was behind what she did. The woman, Donna Walker, has now been arrested.
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2003.   Comments (1)

Death of a Con Artist — David Hampton, the man who conned New York socialites by posing as the son of Sidney Poitier, as well as being the inspiration for the play Six Degrees of Separation, died last month at the age of 39.
Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2003.   Comments (0)

An Irish Life — A New Jersey DJ charmed listeners with her thick Irish brogue and tales of her life growing up in the Emerald Isle. Just one problem. She grew up in New Jersey. (Via the hoaxes community on LiveJournal)
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2003.   Comments (0)

Woman stalks herself — Here's an odd story: an assistant professor at LSU is accused of sending threatening letters to herself.
Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2003.   Comments (0)

Princess Caraboo Parking Lot — I've just learned from a resident of Bristol that the gravesite of Princess Caraboo is soon going to be paved over and turned into a parking lot. It seems a poor way for Bristol to treat one of its most famous historical figures. I found one page protesting the planned parking lot.
Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2003.   Comments (1)

Princess Caraboo Portrait — An 1817 portrait of Princess Caraboo done by Thomas Barker is going up for auction at Christie's soon. Bidding is supposed to reach at least £6000. If I had the money I'd bid on it. It would go nicely above my desk.
Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003.   Comments (0)

The Unknown Man — The strange case of a man whose death revealed that he had been living as an imposter almost his entire life. His true identity is unknown.
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2003.   Comments (0)

The Kingdom of Mombessa — The adventures of Baron Moncrieffe and the mythical Kingdom of Mombessa. The Baron turns out to be a con man, and the Kingdom doesn't exist.
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2003.   Comments (0)

The French Rockefeller — Update on the criminal career of Christopher Rocancourt. He recently confessed to having scammed people by posing as a member of the Rockefeller family. Why people would have believed that a Rockefeller would be speaking with a thick French accent, I still can't understand.
Posted: Sat May 31, 2003.   Comments (1)

Fake Paraplegic — In Australia a fake paraplegic faces charges of fraud. He walked into the court house unaided, using his fully functioning legs.
Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2002.   Comments (0)

I Am Turok — Here's a strange publicity stunt: a London company is seeking five people who are willing to officially change their name to Turok for one year. These people will then be walking, talking billboards helping to spread the word about the X-Box game called 'Turok: Evolution.'
Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2002.   Comments (1)

The Asian Prince — Someone wrote in with some new info about the Asian Prince website, which I have listed in my Hoax Websites Gallery. I stated that I wasn't sure if the Asian Prince was a hoax or not, but this reader reveals that the Prince's name "Wo-Hen Nankan" means "I am very ugly" in Mandarin. A clue that the site really is a hoax.
Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2002.   Comments (2)

Medical Imposters — Interesting story in the Toronto Star about a man who was practicing medicine with fake credentials. But he didn't receive a single complaint about his practice. He was only exposed when the Ontario College of Physicians did a thorough check of the credentials of all medical practitioners in the area. It recalls the case of the Great Imposter, Ferdinand Waldo Demara, who once posed as a naval surgeon named Dr. Joseph Cyr and actually performed a lung operation on an injured soldier, even though he had never had a day of surgical training in his life. The operation was a success. He was only discovered to be a fake because someone recognized his picture when it appeared in a naval newsletter.
Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2002.   Comments (1)

The Crying Indian — The "Crying Indian" was a fake! The guy who starred in all those "Keep America Beautiful" ads during the 1970s turns out not to have had a single drop of Native American blood in him, despite his claims to the contrary. He was actually an Italian-American named Oscar DeCorti.
Posted: Tue Aug 06, 2002.   Comments (6)

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