Writing in Sweden's
Metro newspaper, Jack Werner describes his effort to track down the identity of someone using a set of online aliases — TheIneffableSwede and Veronika Larsson. It started with him simply wanting to interview this person, because back in July they had left a provocative comment on a
Guardian article. But as his search progressed, Werner realized that this person, over the course of the past six years, had created an elaborate fake online persona, with photos showing herself as an attractive young blond woman, and claiming to be a graduate of UC Berkeley and the London School of Economics, and fluent in five languages.
None of her story checked out upon investigation, and the photos were actually those of an unwitting Orange County woman. But Werner never was able to identify who the real person behind the persona is.
The story has shades of the
Kaycee Nicole Swenson case from 2001, except that the motives of the Kaycee Nicole Swenson hoaxer were fairly clear. She wanted to get sympathy and attention by pretending to be a cancer victim. But the motives of whoever created TheIneffableSwede/Veronika Larsson remain much more murky.
Who is Veronika?
metro.se
For six years, the young Swede Veronika Larsson used social media to get into political discussions, books, respected newspapers and casual chitchat. But there was always something off about her. Today, Metro tells the strange story about Veronika.
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