Hoax Museum Blog: Sex/Romance

Operation Knot So Fast — Eighty-three people have been rounded up by federal officials in Florida and accused of participating in sham marriages. A company called All Kind Services was staging fake weddings, complete with props, so that the couples could have photographs of their "wedding day" to show officials. From the Orlando Sentinel:

(Thanks, Joe)

Milfs Appalled by Racy Books — Heraldnet.com (the newspaper of Snohomish County) recently ran this story:


When I saw this story I assumed either it had to be a joke, or the reporter had fallen for a prank. Kind of like when reporters are tricked into quoting "Haywood Jablome" as a source.

A "MILF" (for anyone unfamiliar with the term) is popular internet slang for any attractive older woman. By internet standards, that means any woman over the age of 25. It stands for "Mom I'd like to f***".

So a story about "Marci Milfs" being appalled by racy books has to be a joke. Right? Apparently not. It's just another example of an unfortunate last name. Marci Milfs seems to be a real person.

Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape — Marilyn Monroe seems to attract hoaxes, in the same way that Hitler, Bigfoot, and Paris Hilton do. I guess it's because any news about Marilyn is guaranteed to get attention, which is what many hoaxers are looking for.

The latest Marilyn news is that a sex tape starring her was sold for $1.5 million to an anonymous wealthy businessman, who swore he would never make it public. The tape is said to be a copy of a film that has been kept classified by the FBI.

The promise of the businessman to not market the tape sounds very noble, but nobility probably has little to do with it. The tape is probably being kept from the public because it doesn't exist.

Defamer, with the help of Marilyn Monroe expert Mark Bellinghaus, has put all the pieces of this story together. (If I'm a "hoax-pert," does that make Bellinghaus a "Monroe-xpert"?)

The key point, as Defamer argues, is that the sale to the anonymous businessman was brokered by Keya Morgan "whose main objective is to promote himself and the Monroe documentary that he is working on." Defamer argues that "What Keya Morgan is promoting equates to questionable stories generated simply to sell another book or push another cheesy documentary." Some of the questions that Defamer and Bellinghaus raise:


Keeping key pieces of evidence hidden (such as the tape itself!) is the classic modus operandi of hoaxers. So I'm definitely with Defamer on this. It smells like a hoax.
(Thanks Bob and Joe!)

Related Posts:
• Man mistakes Madonna for Monroe
• The JFK-Marilyn Monroe Correspondence

Update: The Smoking Gun has conducted research that also casts doubt on Morgan's claims.

Molested By Bigfoot — 57-year-old Gene Morrill was charged with soliciting 13-year-old boys over the internet. He pleaded guilty, but in his defense noted that he himself had been molested as a child -- by Bigfoot! The Free Lance-Star reports:


It was probably a strategy to get a reduced sentence due to mental incompetence, but it didn't work. He was sentenced to twenty years.

Quite a few people, men and women, have claimed over the years that they were abducted and molested by Bigfoot. The most famous was the Canadian prospector Albert Ostman, who said that Bigfoot abducted him and held him prisoner for six days for breeding purposes. Brian Helme submitted a haiku to the site a few years ago inspired by this theme:

Woman Marries Blow-Up Bob — Remarries, to be exact. From Yahoo! News:


There's definitely an emerging trend of cardboard or inflatable spouses. Usually it involves military spouses who are stationed abroad.

For instance, back in Dec. 2005 I posted about the Husband Mannequin -- Suzy Walker's stand-in for her husband serving on the USS West Virginia.

Then in Sep. 2006 there was a story going around about Flat Daddys and Flat Mommys -- cardboard cutouts of deployed service members that the military was providing to families. (There are posts about it in both the main blog and the forum.)

I'd be curious to know how old this practice is. Did women back in World War II create husband mannequins?

Quick Links: Feb 14, 2008 — Guy convinces girl he's a vampire-werewolf hybrid
An unusual, but apparently effective pickup strategy. The guy was later charged with statutory sexual assault since he was 19 and she was 15. To prove to police that he was a genuine vampire/werewolf, he showed them his canine teeth. The police pointed out to him that "all mammals, including humans, have canine teeth."

German museum discovers its Monet is a fake
The clues: a retraced signature, it was painted over a drawing that was clearly not a Monet, and a "colourless substance" had been applied to make the painting look older.

Boston man receives postcard from 1929
Could this be the work of the Lost Postcard Rescue Department?

Kid who spotted the Titanic hoax photos nominated for journalism award
I posted about the hoax Titanic photos back in Aug 2007. It's nice for the kid to get an award.

Quick Links: Feb 6, 2008 — Restaurant removes fake surveillance camera from bathroom
"A fake surveillance camera pointing into a bathroom stall of a Second Cup restaurant was taken down Monday after it sparked concerns from the chain's executives and the Quebec government. Second Cup franchisee Francois Turgeon recently installed the decoy camera in his downtown cafe hoping to ward off heroin users who reportedly left dirty needles in the men's bathroom."

Man complains that sex doll lost its moan
"Consumer officials in Romania have upheld a complaint from a man who said his inflatable doll had lost its moan... The man had also complained that the rubber doll deflated too quickly, local media said."

Masked robber forgets to keep mask on
Brian Waltermyer walked into a bank wearing a hood. "He handed a teller a note demanding money, and the teller told him to remove the hood. He did, giving the bank surveillance cameras a crystal-clear view of his face." He was arrested soon after.

Grandma hides cocaine in bra
Big Gary writes: "The only reason this is mildly interesting is it shows the Brassiere Brigade tradition is still alive in Florida."

Quick Links: Feb 1, 2008 — Dave, the forecasting pig
"'Darke County Dave,' a local hog, will opine -- or oswine -- on America's economic outlook on Friday, the Ohio treasurer's office said. In his inaugural outing, Dave will choose between a trough of sugar or one of sawdust to gauge the the economy's future course at the event in Greenville, Ohio, northwest of Dayton." (Thanks, Gary)

How to say "Mr. Rose Apple Nose" in Thai sign language
"Sign language interpreters in Thailand have run afoul of some ruling party supporters by holding their noses to refer to the new prime minister." Big Gary comments: "Here's another of those 'awkward translation' stories, this one apparently true. I didn't know what a 'rose apple' is, so I looked up a description. Frankly, I don't see a resemblance between the pictures of the fruit I could find and the Thai PM. I remember that when Helmut Kohl was Chancellor of Germany, the opposition called him 'The Light Bulb' because his head resembled one. It seemed to me that his real name, which could be translated 'Helmet Cabbage,' was silly enough."

Woman marries five men
"Officials arrested Shauna Keith last week. They said the 27-year-old woman married five men, all members of the military. She is also accused of having five social security numbers."

Twins get married… or maybe not — Last week this story was EVERYWHERE. A pair of twins in Britain, who had been adopted into different families, met and fell in love... without realizing they were twins. They then got married, only to discover the terrible secret they shared. Their marriage was promptly annulled.

When I first read about this, it sounded pretty fishy to me -- very much like an urban legend being reported as news -- but on a cursory reading of the story I also got the impression that there were officials involved who knew about the case but couldn't disclose the identity of the twins. So I accepted the news as true. I think the paragraph in the BBC report linked to above that got me was this one:



To me, this sounded as if Mo O'Reilly actually knew about the case first-hand. Unfortunately, I didn't read the article closely enough. Apparently the only person who knew about the case was Lord Alton who used it as an example during a House of Lords debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill. Lord Alton had heard about the case "from a judge who was involved." In other words, the source is a FOAF (friend of a friend), one of the classic signs of an urban legend.

Jon Henley of the Guardian summarizes the situation:



So it looks like this piece of news needs to be categorized as an urban-legend-reported-as-news until proven otherwise. (Thanks, Joe)

Husband meets wife in brothel — This story sounds suspiciously like an urban legend being reported as news. It could, of course, be true, though the source (a Polish tabloid called Super Express) makes it difficult to fact check:

Bigfoot Bait — I wonder how many women are going to respond to this craigslist ad? The scary thing is that the guy's probably completely serious.

Jontex Condom Ad - Possible Hoax — The image to the right shows what is supposedly a guerrilla marketing campaign by Jontex, a Brazilian brand of condoms owned by Johnson & Johnson. The campaign involves a cardboard cutout that can be positioned beneath the door of a bathroom stall. The Brazilian phrase translates to, "You do not know when it can be necessary."

But strangely, Johnson and Johnson is denying responsibility for the ad. Or, at least, the folks who run the Johnson and Johnson blog claim it's not their company's campaign:



It seems like a lot of work for someone to create as a hoax. It could either be a subviral campaign (an ad campaign that a company creates but then denies responsibility for), or a "spec ad" (a speculative ad created by an agency to show a potential client what they're capable of).

Still No Sex In Space — Ever since humans first made it into space, there have been rumors of sex-in-space experiments. Such rumors are doing the rounds again, and this time it's the Russians who are the focus of them. Russian officials decided they should go on record to deny them:


I like that last line. Apparently the Russians have no problem with experiments involving two-headed dogs or human-ape hybrids, but they draw the line at sex-in-space research.

Bat Bugs Have Fake Genitals — National Geographic has an article about a "hotbed of deception" in the natural world. It involves the genitals of a small, reddish-brown parasite called the bat bug. In order to protect themselves from the unwanted advances of male members of the species, female bat bugs have evolved a region on their body similar to a fake genital:
It turns out that male bat bugs sport a similar fake genital area, because males often perform "the same injurious sexual acts on other males." All in all, the sex life of the bat bug sounds like a rather unpleasant affair.

Is my baby gay? — A website called Is My Baby Gay offers to inform you of your child's sexual preferences for a fee of only $19.99. They direct customers to print out a circle on a piece of paper. You're then supposed to apply the tongue of your baby to the center of the circle for 15 seconds. You mail this piece of paper to the "Is My Baby Gay" testing center, and they promise to get back to you with an answer within two weeks. If they turn out to be wrong, they promise that they'll refund 150% of your purchase price.

At first I thought this had to be a joke, but apparently they really will take your money. They've set up a paypal payment system to do so. Which transforms this from a joke into something more like a scam. [Note: I didn't actually try to pay them anything, so perhaps at the last minute they decline to take your money... but somehow I doubt it.]

On their front page they've included a phrase which is apparently their legal escape clause: "Results are intended for entertainment purposes only."

I'd like to think that no one would actually take this site seriously and mail in their baby's saliva sample. But there's probably someone out there dumb enough to think this might be for real.

Even dumber would be someone knowing there is no such thing as a saliva test for sexual preference, but paying $19.99 anyway just for the fun of getting some bogus results.

Who’s That Girl? — Recently someone posted on facebook pictures supposedly recovered from a camera they found while on holiday. The photos showed an attractive young woman posing in various stages of undress. The guy who found the camera wrote:

The only thing surprising would have been if this didn't turn out to be a viral marketing campaign for a porn site. But no surprise here. It all turned out to be a viral marketing campaign for a porn site. (Thanks, Cranky Media Guy)

Fake Money For Strippers — Damon Armagost probably thought he had a pretty good scam going. He had printed up some fake $100 bills from an image he downloaded off the internet. He was then using this counterfeit money to pay for lap dances at a strip club. He must have thought the strippers would never notice the money was fake. Unfortunately for him, they did and alerted the police, who arrested Armagost and charged him with manufacturing and passing counterfeit currency.

Carl Sifakis, in his book Hoaxes and Scams, reports on a similar scam called "tishing a lady." It involves paying a prostitute with tissue paper instead of real money. The con artist flashes a large bill at the prostitute and makes a show of stuffing it into her stocking. But in reality he palms the bill and stuffs in tissue paper instead.

Sifakis writes that the con-artist Count Victor Lustig frequently used this scam. He would "warn the female that he had given her trick money, and if she removed it before the following day it would turn to tissue paper. The lady would promise to comply with the rules, but as soon as Lustig left, she would remove her reward; alas, it had indeed turned to tissue paper."

Best of the Forum - 24th August 07 — Due to personal circumstances, this week's Best of the Forum post is brought to you by guest writer and board moderator Madmouse.

Unauthorised Reincarnation Banned in Tibet (MadCarlotta)
China has banned Buddhists from reincarnating without permission, in an apparent attempt to have the next Dalai Lama chosen by the Chinese government.
From the news article:
"According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

This could lead to a situation where there are two Dalai Lamas, one recognised by millions of Buddhists around the world, and one by the Chinese government.
I don’t know how much of an effect this would have, but it would be a situation best avoided, if possible.

Skype Outage Caused By U.S. Government Spy Plan? (LaMa)
There’s been a lot of discussion in the forum about this conspiracy theory.
www.skype-news.com says:
“Skype says the problem was triggered by a Microsoft patch, delivered by Windows Update, which caused an automatic reboot of many PCs. "The high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction," says Skype's Villu Arak. According to Arak, the system would normally have recovered quickly, but on this occasion "a previously unseen bug" caused the network to fail.”
However, this news item suggests that the outage was in fact caused by the introduction of eavesdropping technology, made permissible by a newly-introduced law.

Online Game Used As Epidemic Scenario (Hulitoons)
Scientists have been studying players’ reactions to a disease in online game ‘World of Warcraft’. The researchers say that the information gathered about people’s varying reactions to a crisis like this could prove useful in the event of a genuine epidemic.
From the BBC article:
Researcher Professor Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, said: “Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour.The players seemed to really feel they were at risk and took the threat of infection seriously, even though it was only a game.”
Even if people might act somewhat differently in a game, I think that this is a reasonable (and safe) way of gathering data.

Rampant Rabbit In Stick-Up (Dave and Madmouse)
A man was jailed for five years for a robbery at a bookmakers in which he used the sex toy instead of a gun. The vibrator was hidden in a carrier bag, and seemed realistic enough that the shop staff handed over £600.
I do wonder what on earth made him think of using that rather than, say, a toy gun…

Penis Peanut — Brenda has been so good as to send me these pictures of a peanut she found that she believes looks like a penis. She writes: I've already told her the name of the casino: goldenpalace.com. As for how to sell this thing, I'm not sure. But I know that, somewhere out there, there's got to be a home for the Penis Peanut.

Biologically Inappropriate Mating Objects — One of the topics I cover in Elephants on Acid is experiments with animals who exhibit mating behavior toward "biologically inappropriate objects." For instance, during the 1950s, Martin Schein and Edgar Hale of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a series of experiments to determine what objects would elicit a sexual response from male turkeys. They discovered that all you have to do is show a male turkey a severed turkey head on a stick, and the dim-witted birds would invariably try to mate with it. And researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center created a "hypersexual cat" who attempted to mate with "a small and rather friendly dog," an old hen, and a rhesus monkey. (I have photographic documentation of these experiments in the book.)

These following stories don't have anything to do with hoaxes, but they did remind me of the experiments in my book:

Lusty Camel Kills Woman
An Australian woman was killed by a pet camel she had received for her 60th birthday when the camel knocked her to the ground, lay on top of her, and began trying to mate with her. Earlier the same camel had almost killed the family's pet goat by trying to have sex with it. I'd say they've got a problem with that camel.

Man Arrested For Sex Acts With Traffic Signs
Proving that no matter how odd the mating behavior of animals is, the behavior of humans is always stranger, police arrested a Sioux Falls man who had amassed a large collection of videos of himself "engaged in masturbation and sex acts with traffic signs near his home."