Sorry guys I have been busy with work and I didn't get time to follow though with my story on Steven Frischling, the con artist who fooled the airline industry for almost four years.
In my previous post I stated that Steven gave us very strong clues that he was the impersonator but we really never had something conclusive to pin him down, you see, everything was very circumstantial. Until Now.
Steven posted two tweets today in which he virtually gave himself up as the impostor who was impersonating an African airline two years ago and posting fake tweets to genuinely concerned passengers. In 2009, I knew that whoever could pull this off was not a very smart guy. From watching 1000s of episodes on Crime & Investigation, I always believe that crimes like this are comitted by people very CLOSE to you. So, I had narrowed on my suspects to two people: 1.Steven Frischling and 2 Steven Frischling. Yes, this guy has a dual personality :-)
So I used various threats and tricks to make him take down the account. I asked Steven politely whether he was responsible but he denied saying something like his professional ethics could never allow him to do something of this nature and even offered to help us take down the account on conditions as I discussed in the previous post, so I threatened to blog about the issue BUT also turned my attention to the impersonator and then account went down 6 hours later.
From newly emerging evidence, it seems the actual trigger was not the blog threat but some tweet and message that I sent NOT to Steven but TO THE IMPERSONATOR! It was pure bluff, I told the impersonator that I could trace his IP address from his Twitter messages :-) and the account went offline almost in the next 10 minutes. So how did Steven read this message about the IP being traced? What psychic energy did Steven posses to enable him read other people's DMs? Also, why did he assume I was addressing him via my tweet while I was ACTUALLY ADDRESSING THE IMPERSONATOR? It's called a Freudian slip. The impersonator, whom we can now confidently reveal as Steven Frischling, the Travel Strategist, believed that I could actually trace his IP address from a Twitter message! Awesome!
And from his tweet today, there is a very strong reason to believe that he still entertains that belief. He wants me to explain how I could possibly do that!
Here's an exchange I had with the impersonator in 2009, whom, with 120% confidence, I can now confirm as Steven Frischling
There are other hilarious sections of the conversation. For example he claimed to be tweeting from some building in the city centre. So I asked him about the street where he was located and after what I presume to be a very quick Google search he gave out the name of a street that's almost 20km away. To give rough illustration of the scale of stupidity involved here from the Google map of New York, it's like someone tweeting in Empire State Building on 12th Avenue. In Africa, we call such a person a Mampara, a total and complete idiot.
I am done here. Steven don't let me go on to proving the $1 million demand. You are very forgetful but I have very long memory plus "hard evidence" that you demanded. Remember, if it's digital it can't be deleted. To our regular readers, my colleague Katie who is now running the blog will be featuring some interesting posts from the Timetablist Blog. Don't miss out.
Thanks everyone.
In my previous post I stated that Steven gave us very strong clues that he was the impersonator but we really never had something conclusive to pin him down, you see, everything was very circumstantial. Until Now.
Steven posted two tweets today in which he virtually gave himself up as the impostor who was impersonating an African airline two years ago and posting fake tweets to genuinely concerned passengers. In 2009, I knew that whoever could pull this off was not a very smart guy. From watching 1000s of episodes on Crime & Investigation, I always believe that crimes like this are comitted by people very CLOSE to you. So, I had narrowed on my suspects to two people: 1.Steven Frischling and 2 Steven Frischling. Yes, this guy has a dual personality :-)
So I used various threats and tricks to make him take down the account. I asked Steven politely whether he was responsible but he denied saying something like his professional ethics could never allow him to do something of this nature and even offered to help us take down the account on conditions as I discussed in the previous post, so I threatened to blog about the issue BUT also turned my attention to the impersonator and then account went down 6 hours later.
From newly emerging evidence, it seems the actual trigger was not the blog threat but some tweet and message that I sent NOT to Steven but TO THE IMPERSONATOR! It was pure bluff, I told the impersonator that I could trace his IP address from his Twitter messages :-) and the account went offline almost in the next 10 minutes. So how did Steven read this message about the IP being traced? What psychic energy did Steven posses to enable him read other people's DMs? Also, why did he assume I was addressing him via my tweet while I was ACTUALLY ADDRESSING THE IMPERSONATOR? It's called a Freudian slip. The impersonator, whom we can now confidently reveal as Steven Frischling, the Travel Strategist, believed that I could actually trace his IP address from a Twitter message! Awesome!
And from his tweet today, there is a very strong reason to believe that he still entertains that belief. He wants me to explain how I could possibly do that!
Here's an exchange I had with the impersonator in 2009, whom, with 120% confidence, I can now confirm as Steven Frischling
There are other hilarious sections of the conversation. For example he claimed to be tweeting from some building in the city centre. So I asked him about the street where he was located and after what I presume to be a very quick Google search he gave out the name of a street that's almost 20km away. To give rough illustration of the scale of stupidity involved here from the Google map of New York, it's like someone tweeting in Empire State Building on 12th Avenue. In Africa, we call such a person a Mampara, a total and complete idiot.
I am done here. Steven don't let me go on to proving the $1 million demand. You are very forgetful but I have very long memory plus "hard evidence" that you demanded. Remember, if it's digital it can't be deleted. To our regular readers, my colleague Katie who is now running the blog will be featuring some interesting posts from the Timetablist Blog. Don't miss out.
Thanks everyone.
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