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Preposterous Imposters (Identity Thieves; Fraudsters; Etc.)

Mythopoeika said:
Another one? Notice how they all gravitate towards the education sector - probably because people find it awkward to call them out on it.
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I'm not sure a sample size of only 2 is sufficient to conclude that. Still ...

I suspect that at least in these two cases it had a lot to do with being a younger adult in academe - where progressive mindsets and PC hair-splitting are more common than in the society at large. It's probably also relevant that both women were engaged in academic areas and activities involving ethnicity and race relations.

Krug mentioned she'd had "mental health" issues relating to identity dating back to her youth, and Vitolo-Haddad mentioned in her online apologies she'd been grappling with issues of self-identification / self-attribution.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I'm not sure a sample size of only 2 is sufficient to conclude that. Still ...
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3 that I know of...
Rachel Dolezal
Jessica Krug
CV Vitolo-Haddad

All women, all in education. All blaming mental illness for their deceit.
There might be more. It's mighty odd.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Another one? Notice how they all gravitate towards the education sector - probably because people find it awkward to call them out on it.
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Or the education sector is rather better at finding them than other places?
 
Frideswide said:
Or the education sector is rather better at finding them than other places?
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Maybe. I think the education sector is a 'safe space' for this kind of thing. If someone tried it in the commercial sector, they'd end up in trouble (or even fired).
 
Mythopoeika said:
I think the education sector is a 'safe space' for this kind of thing.
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How integrated are you in the education sector @Mythopoeika?

I ask because there is constant scrutiny when you are working in academia - in Europe at least, I have no direct experience of North America for example - because your job, progression and remuneration depend on you personally, and the public face you present in a variety of ways.
 
Serial killer expert Stephane Bourgoin admits he made most of his books and TV shows up:
News story

As mentioned in the latest FT, but I think we missed it here. Makes me wonder how many more self-proclaimed experts are frauds when you do a little digging. I suppose the sheer numbers of killers in his claims should have had the bullshit-o-meter showing readings through the roof. And his "murdered" wife was a little too convenient too.
 
GNC said:
There's an episode of Quincy ME where he investigates the death of a black man pretending to be white. It's called "passing". You can learn a lot from Quincy (like punk rock music can kill).
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Primarily the danger of slashing the federal funding of a host of public bodies.

I swear the writers of the latter episodes just picked a random organisation and highlighted what they actually do and how vital it is that their funding be maintained.

I happen to think Jack Klugman a fine actor, but it all got a bit 'He-Man' towards the end.

Without the vital work of the park management bureau, it's no wonder that that the youth of today are falling into a cycle of crime and heroin abuse!
 
A woman in Georgia attempted to get free fast food by posing as an FBI agent and threatening to arrest anyone who resisted her demands. As if that weren't bizarre enough, she tried the same stunt multiple times during the past week.
Police: Woman posing as FBI agent sought free fast food

Police have jailed a woman in Georgia accused of pretending to be an FBI agent to score a free fast-food meal, saying she allegedly threatened to arrest restaurant workers if they didn’t serve her a complimentary bite.

Kimberly Ragsdale, 47, of Dallas, was charged Thursday with impersonating a public officer following repeated attempts to get free meals at a Chick-Fil-A, according to a Rockmart Police arrest report obtained by news outlets.

Employees at the restaurant told investigators that Ragsdale showed up at the location multiple times during the week and posed as a federal agent while driving a white minivan, and also threatened to take employees into custody if they didn’t comply, the police report said. ...

It added that the woman continued the farce as police arrived to arrest her in the restaurant parking lot Thursday, reportedly claiming to officers that she was an FBI agent and that her credentials were electronic. While being handcuffed, she allegedly began to “talk into her shirt like she was talking into a radio telling someone that we were arresting her and to send someone to Rockmart PD,” officers wrote in the arrest report. ...
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FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/woman-posing-as-fbi-for-free-fast-food-ecf80718c6f2218e7a4a3c58aa42da8e
 
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A pair of Tampa Bay area women were arrested for impersonating police officers and making traffic stops.
2 women arrested for impersonating Sarasota law enforcement, livestreaming fake traffic stop

Two Tampa Bay women are facing charges of impersonating a law enforcement officer after police say they stopped a car Sunday morning pretending to be Sarasota officers.

According to the Sarasota Police Department, detectives believe 28-year-old Jymieka McDowell, of Sarasota, and 39-year-old Ryshawnna Poole, of Manatee County, have done this before and are now asking any potential victim(s) to come forward.

Police say just before 1 a.m. Sunday, SPD officers responded to the 1200 block of 31st Street for a suspicious incident. The caller told officers they heard what they believed to be another SPD officer in distress.

While searching the area, police say officers instead found a car attempting to stop another vehicle near Cocoanut Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.

According to police, the car had red and blue lights in the windshield and a siren. ...

Police say the women livestreamed the fake traffic stop on Facebook. In the video, SPD said McDowell and Poole were claiming to be law enforcement officers, made threatening and derogatory statements to the driver and passengers of a car they had stopped.

The victims in the car that had stopped do not know McDowell or Poole, according to the sheriff’s office. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.wfla.com/news/local-new...law-enforcement-livestream-fake-traffic-stop/
 
Is Uday Hussein's 'double' really just an impostor?

Article is from 2011.

With a strikingly similar face to Uday – who was gunned down by American special forces alongside his brother Qusay in July 2003 – Mr Yahia first emerged in Europe in the early 1990s with a remarkable claim that generated headlines around the world.

He told intelligence agents that he had lived a life of servitude as Uday's body double – and had turned on his master when Uday tried to kill him because a girlfriend had become overly flirtatious. Memoirs and international fame quickly followed.
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But did he really?
 
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A Berlin man was masquerading as an air traffic controller and communicating fake flight orders to aircraft.
Berlin man caught directing flight traffic with radio

A man has been arrested in Berlin on allegations he made radio contact with air traffic, including police helicopters, and gave fake flight orders while impersonating an aviation official ...

The 32-year-old, whose identity wasn’t released in line with German privacy laws, was arrested Thursday night in the capital’s eastern Koepenick district ...

Police were able to swoop in on his apartment after he made contact with a police helicopter that was dispatched to the neighborhood in the hope of flushing him out.

During a search of his home, police found two radios that transmitted on the frequencies needed to make contact with aircraft. ...

“For everyone who has been asking about our police helicopter operations in Koepenick, an unusual arrest,” Berlin police tweeted ...

The man is alleged to have made contact with pilots of passenger and transport aircraft, as well as state and federal police helicopters, over the past six months, giving “potentially dangerous” instructions and becoming increasingly professional with his communications. ...
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SOURCE: https://apnews.com/article/arrests-berlin-f56833f73c7ecfa34a5ed5e6461669bc
 
The fundamental problem you have got with the human condition is that at a base level, as a species we want to believe, it we hear a few facts that, in our minds, have the ring of truth, then we are happy to go along with what we are told, up to the point where we hear something that doesnt ring true, only then are our suspicions aroused and we begin to look back with, what i like to call gods curse, (even though im not religious in any way shape or form) hindsight, suddenly we think 'hang on a damn minute this guy is full of shit', but ultimately we are too trusting and to willing to take things on face value, me personally, trust nobody lol
 
Sometime i just bullshit people for shit and giggles, people will believe most things if you have the confidence to pull it off.
 
How does a 50-year-old Japanese biker get more likes on social media? He digitally modifies images to make followers think he's a cute young lady.
Face editing: Japanese biker tricks internet into thinking he is a young woman

Photos of a smiling young woman with her motorbike proved popular with social media users in Japan and began to notch up hundreds of likes.

But some eagle-eyed followers noticed things did not add up; her arm seemed very hairy in one photo, and a mirror reflection showed a different face.

A TV show revealed the star of Twitter user @azusagakuyuki was actually a 50-year-old man named Zonggu.

He admitted to using photo editing apps to create his alter ego. ...
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FULL STORY (And Photos): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56447357
 
Here's the first-person account of a UK academic's discovery of, and investigation into, a university-based imposter whose successes were obtained by claiming the author's work and identity as his own.
Experience: I tracked down my impostor

I’ve been an academic since 2013. I am a senior lecturer in art history, and director of US studies at the University of Essex. What drove me towards an academic career was my interest in tattooing. There is a very small group of tattoo historians in academia, so we all know one another well.

In November 2017, Anna Friedman, a Chicago-based academic with a similar specialism, contacted me. She had received a like on Instagram from an account she thought was interesting. Clicking on the profile, she saw it was a duplicate of her page and that the guy had also made a copy of her website, including her very specific biography, but under his own name. When she looked at his profile on academia.edu, she instantly realised that his bio was a copy of mine; the papers he’d supposedly written were actually by me. He’d claimed to have given talks that I, or others in our academic circle, had given. Anna messaged me asking if I knew who this person was, but I had no idea.

We started digging around, and things quickly became unsettling. I found a video clip of him at a conference, reading a chapter I’d written. He was dressed like me. Even his mannerisms and speech patterns were similar. Then I came across a picture of his hands, where he’d poorly copied my tattoos: the flowers on the backs of my hands, with the words “know more” and “artefact” written across the fingers. This man had been stealing my work and elements of my identity for years. It creeped me out. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/26/experience-i-tracked-down-my-impostor
 
This man in Colorado went a bit overboard in living his dream of becoming a policeman in his new homeland.
Some say Colorado police volunteer's passion went too far

An Aurora man who was pulled over in Denver in a white Crown Victoria with emergency lights and a pushbar in April says he wasn't trying to impersonate a police officer.

Elchin Dadashov says he drives the car and wears a tidy black uniform because he's a security guard for several marijuana shops. ...

Sentinel Colorado reports the Azerbaijan native has wanted to become a police officer since he was 10 and had signed up to volunteer with the Aurora Police Department.

Still, some say his appearance was indistinguishable from a police officer, and he should have been charged. ...
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SOURCE: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/ne...lorado-police-volunteers-passion-went-too-far
 

Hospital patient dies after security guard performs surgery​


A woman died after an ex-security guard at a Pakistani hospital posed as a doctor and performed surgery on her, police said Monday.

Shameema Begum, aged 80, died on Sunday, two weeks after Muhammad Waheed Butt attempted to treat her back wound at a public hospital in the eastern city of Lahore.

Mayo_Hospital%2C_Lahore.jpg


"We can't keep up with what every doctor and what everyone is doing at all times. It's a large hospital," explained an administrative official from Lahore's Mayo Hospital, who did not want to be named.

He said it was unclear what type of surgery the imposter had performed in the operating theatre, where a qualified technician was also present.

Pakistan's public hospitals, where patients are required to pay some money towards treatment, can often be inefficient and chaotic.

"The guard has been charged and is in police custody," Lahore police spokesman Ali Safdar told AFP.

"Butt had posed as a doctor and made home visits to other patients in the past also."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-ne...nt-dies-after-security-guard-performs-surgery

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:

Hospital patient dies after security guard performs surgery​


A woman died after an ex-security guard at a Pakistani hospital posed as a doctor and performed surgery on her, police said Monday.

Shameema Begum, aged 80, died on Sunday, two weeks after Muhammad Waheed Butt attempted to treat her back wound at a public hospital in the eastern city of Lahore.

Mayo_Hospital%2C_Lahore.jpg


"We can't keep up with what every doctor and what everyone is doing at all times. It's a large hospital," explained an administrative official from Lahore's Mayo Hospital, who did not want to be named.

He said it was unclear what type of surgery the imposter had performed in the operating theatre, where a qualified technician was also present.

Pakistan's public hospitals, where patients are required to pay some money towards treatment, can often be inefficient and chaotic.

"The guard has been charged and is in police custody," Lahore police spokesman Ali Safdar told AFP.

"Butt had posed as a doctor and made home visits to other patients in the past also."

https://www.france24.com/en/live-ne...nt-dies-after-security-guard-performs-surgery

maximus otter
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Shameema Begum?
 
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