It’s the biggest forgery case to ever occur. Period. Murder Among the Mormons III, observer
After Mark’s confessions, the Parole Board decides he will serve his entire life in prison. ibid. caption
Fairies Photographed: An Epoch-Making Event Described By A Conan Doyle. Strand Magazine Christmas edition
Francis Griffiths has brought her daughter to see the house in Cottingley where she lived with her cousin Elsie Wright during the First World War. Francis and Elsie used to go down to play by the Beck, the stream at the bottom of the garden, and it was by that stream they said in 1917 they took photographs of Fairies ... Francis and Elsie confessed the pictures were faked ... The case was cracked in 1928 with evidence from the Brotherton collection at Leeds University. Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World of Powers
Silver-Tongued? Alex Jones peddled a fake Coronavirus cure that can turn people’s skin permanently blue: InfoWars has long sold alternative medicine products, claiming miraculous health benefits. And many others are trying to cash in on the public health crisis by selling colloidal silver products and other fake cures. The state of Missouri sued televangelist Jim Bakker for peddling SilverSol products as a Coronavirus medication, and the FDA sent a warning last week to seven companies that were making similar claims. Quartz online news report 14th March 2020
Hundreds of fake paintings. Millions of dollars and a master forger who changed the history of art itself. Masterminds s1e16: The Forger’s Art, truTV 2004
In 1986 the iron-clad system of provenance failed spectacularly as a master criminal fooled the world’s greatest art experts. And executed the most sophisticated forgery scam in the history of modern art. ibid.
Drewe now reinvents himself as a cultured art expert to get the respect he craves ... In the back pages of Private Eye magazine he uncovers a starving artist with the skills he needs: John Myatt. ibid.
‘I just thought to myself this is too good to be true.’ ibid. John Myatt
Drewe is not only alienating his wife, but his partner in crime as well ... Drewe’s hold on reality is beginning to slip ... He claims he is actually working for the British Secret Service selling the painting to raise money for covert weapons sales. ibid.
Drewe is finally found guilty and sent to prison for six years. ibid.
Police estimate there are still over a hundred and seventy of his forgeries corrupting collections around the world. ibid.
‘He became the largest purveyor of counterfeit memorabilia in the country.’ Masterminds s56: Foul Ball
In 1996 the Chicago FBI discovered that Michael Jordan’s autograph was being forged … Thousands of Jordan’ forgeries had flooded the market. ibid.
Wayne Bray built the biggest sports memorabilia forgery operation in US history. ibid.
A high school student nearly crippled the nation’s economy … ‘He [Wesley Webber] was Canada’s most notorious counterfeiter.’ Masterminds e59: Money Maker
In the late 1990s Windsor, Ontario. was hit with a flood of extraordinary counterfeit hundred dollar bills. ibid.
As Weber’s fortune grows so does his greed and it soon threatens to bring him down. ibid.
April 1983, The Sunday Times, London: Hugh Trevor-Roper is Britain’s most celebrated historian. Days that Shook the World s3e3: Diaries of Adolf Hitler, BBC 2005
The newspaper’s presses downstairs will be printing the biggest scoop the paper has ever had: the publication of the diaries of Adolf Hitler written across the whole period of the Fuhrer’s reign. ibid.
Trevor-Roper is the leading authority on Hitler and the Third Reich. ibid.
The new owner of Times Newspapers Rupert Murdoch entered a bidding war to buy the rights to the diaries. ibid.
Nazi memorabilia ... the number of forgeries is vast and uncontrolled. ibid.
No surviving Nazi had ever mentioned Hitler keeping a diary. ibid.
He [Trevor-Roper] decides to make a clean break and tell the world his fears. ibid.
The paper in the diaries was laced with a chemical whitener that had not existed before 1955 ... The ink was not more than twelve months old. ibid.
It was one of the great discoveries of the last century. Sixty-two volumes of the hand-written personal diaries of one the most infamous and reviled men in modern history: Adolf Hitler. History’s Greatest Hoaxes s1e3: Hitler’s Diaries, Yesterday 2016
Rupert Murdoch paid a cool $500,000 for the rights to publish them in The Sunday Times. ibid.
Having already put in place a deal to buy the Hitler diaries [Magnus] Linklater was tasked with trying to authenticate their contents and validate Murdoch’s proposed purchase. ibid.
The Sunday Times was still not completely sure that the diaries weren’t fakes so they asked revered Cambridge historian Hugh Trevor-Roper … [who] started to have serious doubts. ibid.
On September 17th 1903 the Daily Telegram shared a shared story with its readers in Clarksburg, West Virginia. A dispute over a pet dog between two immigrant miners had led to a tragedy: it was one of the miners who took the bullet. ibid. Ian Hislop’s Fake News, BBC 2019
What motivates fake news? From propaganda and paranoia to profit and politics. ibid.
New York Journal: Destruction of the War Ship Maine was the work of an enemy. ibid.
When President Trump talks about fake news, which he has more or less constantly since being elected in 2016, what he means is real news that he doesn’t like. ibid.
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion purports to reveal the detailed plans with which a Jewish elite will take over the world. ibid.
There are occasions where fake news has been undertaken with the full knowledge of the state and justified as being in the national interest. ibid.
Doesn’t lying make us as bad as the enemy? … Lies have unforeseeable consequences. ibid.
I believe that there are potentially very real threats from fake news. ibid.
The dinosaur fake was a dreadful blow for supporters of the bird theory ... Its front half was a new kind of primitive bird. Fossil hunters flocked to the region where it had been found – and they struck gold. Extinct: A Horizon Guide to Dinosaurs, BBC 2011
In 2002 one very special ossuary appeared. Inscribed on the side were the words James, Son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. It was heralded as the first physical evidence of Jesus Christ and caused a worldwide sensation ... Strangely, the owner was Oded Golan. Horizon: King Solomon’s Tablet of Stone, BBC 2004
The Israeli authorities were also suspicious. They raided Golan’s apartment and store-houses. There they found the ossuary perched on a toilet. And they also unearthed the illusive stone. ibid.
The focus of their attention was the patina ... Yuval Goren is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University. And a geologist. He has a detailed knowledge of both Biblical archaeology and the rocks of the Jerusalem area. ibid.
How could the patina on the front of the stone be different from that on the back? ... The patina from within the carved letters – strangely, it didn’t seem to be bonded to the stone in any natural way at all. ibid.
Alarmed by what he found with the stone, Professor Goren turned his attention to the James’ ossuary. Again he found a similar story. A freshly cut inscription with an artificial patina applied over the top. On 18th June 2003 the Israeli authorities delivered their verdict. ibid.
In the summer of 2003 after the biggest archaeological investigation in Israeli police history Oded Golan was taken into custody. It was then that investigators realised they could be dealing with more than just the stone and the ossuary. When police searched Golan’s apartment they found a hidden workshop filled with tools and half-made artefacts. ibid.
The patina is very loosely connected to the stone. Here you can see how it reacts to me scraping it with a matchstick. And you see that it easily peels off the letter as opposed to the backside. When the letters are cleared, the inner part of the letters is exposed, and as you can see here it is very freshly cut; you can see even the little lines, the little parallel lines of either the chisel or even maybe some drill, some electric bit or drill, with which the letters were engraved, which is of course very unusual for ancient inscriptions ... And therefore I believe that the inscription is not genuine. Professor Yuval Goren
It is a little Pomegranate made of the tooth of a hippopotamus ... The inscription was engraved on it when it was already broken. It is probably a fake, probably a forgery. Professor Yuval Goren, Tel Aviv University
The story begins in 2001. A professor from the Jerusalem University receives a call from a mysterious person who refuses to give his real name. And asks this professor to come to a hotel in Jerusalem ... He opens up the briefcase. Takes out a gorgeous piece of black stone with ancient writing on it, and asks the two professors to authenticate the piece. Boaz Gaon, Ma-ariv Newspaper
We couldn’t find anything that would lead us to the conclusion that it was a forgery. Dr Amnon Rosenfeld, Geological Survey of Israel