Hoaxes

The estranged wife of a Fullerton high school teacher and her boyfriend documented in a series of text messages nearly every step of a plan to plant a shotgun and marijuana in the instructor's car, according to court documents released Monday. Gregory Abbott, 31, a teacher at Sunny Hills High School, was arrested last month when police, acting on a tip, searched his car in the school parking lot and found a shotgun, marijuana and prescription drugs.

Nearly a month after Charter Oak High School began investigating how fake names for members of the Black Student Union and other students were published in the yearbook, school officials are still looking for a way to resolve the controversy. Administrators at the Covina school will meet with BSU members and their families Monday to determine the best solution, said Principal Kathleen Wiard.

Turns out Bigfoot was just a rubber gorilla suit. Two researchers on a quest to prove the existence of Bigfoot say the carcass encased in a block of ice was thawed and found to be a fraud. Steve Kulls, executive director of squatchdetective.com and host of Squatchdetective Radio, announced the findings on a Website run by Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi. Matt Whitton, an officer on medical leave from the Clayton County, Ga.

Milan's Osteria L'Intrepido restaurant won Wine Spectator magazine's award of excellence this year despite a wine list that features a 1993 Amarone Classico Gioe S. Sofia, which the magazine once likened to "paint thinner and nail varnish." Even worse: Osteria L'Intrepido doesn't exist. To the magazine's chagrin, the restaurant is a Web-based fiction devised by wine critic and author Robin Goldstein, who said he wanted to expose the lack of any foundation for many food and wine awards.

Apple Inc. investors experienced palpitations Friday after an apparently false report that Chief Executive Steve Jobs had had a heart attack sent shares down 9% in a matter of minutes. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the report, which appeared just before 7 a.m. EDT on iReport .com, a user-submitted news website run by CNN.

A Midwestern mother accused of using a fake MySpace account to torment a teenager who later committed suicide thought the plan was a clever and funny way to deal with a girl she suspected was spreading lies about her daughter, according to witnesses Thursday. Ashley Grills, who was testifying under a grant of immunity, said that Lori Drew was directly involved in creating the bogus MySpace profile of a 16-year-old boy that was used to lure Megan Meier, 13, into an online relationship.

A hoax caller claiming to be India's foreign minister threatened Pakistan's president with war during the final hours of the Mumbai attacks, prompting Islamabad to put its air force on its highest alert for nearly 24 hours, a news report said Saturday. Meanwhile, Indian authorities reported the first arrests since the end of last month's siege in India's commercial and entertainment capital, which killed more than 170 people.

An eighth letter containing suspicious powder and addressed to a governor's office was intercepted in Juneau, bearing a Texas postmark like suspicious mailings to other governors this week, officials said. A spokeswoman for Gov. Sarah Palin said the letter was addressed to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, who left office two years ago. Seven suspicious letters to governors' offices bore Dallas postmarks, the FBI said. Those seven were determined to contain harmless powder, but results of tests on the Alaska letter were pending, the FBI office in Anchorage said.

The New York Times admitted that it published a fake letter purportedly from the mayor of Paris criticizing Caroline Kennedy's Senate bid as "appalling" and "not very democratic." "What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton's seat?" the letter said. "We French can only see a dynastic move of the vanishing Kennedy clan in the very country of the Bill of Rights." In an editor's note posted on its website, the Times said: "We have already expressed our regrets to [the mayor's]

Meagan McCormic's tearful pleas and photos of her ostensibly missing 6-month-old son riveted Miami television viewers and sent police scrambling on Christmas Day. But, police said Friday, McCormic made up the whole story -- even fabricating the infant in an effort to hang on to a boyfriend who lived 1,400 miles away. The boyfriend was coming for Christmas to see his son for the first time, or so he believed.