Fake howard hughes biography fraud
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Clifford Irving
In 1971 publisher McGraw-Hill, Inc. thought they had the scoop of the century. A writer named Clifford Irving convinced them that he had worked with reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes to produce Hughes’ life story. Irving managed to keep his swindle running for a while, long enough to bilk $750,000 out of the company under the pretense that the checks were going to Mr. Hughes through Mr. Irving. Swiss banking authorities notified McGraw-Hill that the “Mr. H.R. Hughes” depositing the check in their bank was a woman.
Since much of Irving’s scam had taken place using the mail, postal inspectors began an investigation. They focused on letters supposedly written by Hughes. Although McGraw-Hill had hired their own experts to authenticate the handwriting, which they determined could be Hughes’, postal inspectors took another tact. As Inspector John Tarpey told a Toledo Blade reporter in 1973, “We tried to approach it from the other side. We wanted to see whethe
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If He Did It
Clifford Irving was once a household name. On December 7, 1971, McGraw-Hill Book Company announced the imminent publication of The Autobiography of Howard Hughes, a book Irving had assembled from more than a hundred hours of interviews he’d conducted with the billionaire everyone had heard of but hardly anyone knew. An American expatriate living on the Spanish island of Ibiza, Irving had several thrillers to his name and had recently published a biography of the prolific art forger Elmyr dem Hory. Irving, it seemed, sent a copy of that book to Hughes and received in reply a letter scrawled on yellow legal paper. The tycoon was impressed. No fool, Irving sensed an opening and wrote back, promising he could muster as much writerly sensitivity for a book about Hughes’s life. To the author’s surprise, Hughes accepted the offer.
No one interviewed Hughes. Few people even saw him. In fact, Hughes was so skittish about publicity that he had avoided all contact with the
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Clifford Irving: Author whose literary hoax fooled America in the Seventies and inspired a Hollywood film
One of the greatest literary hoaxes of the 20th century – call it a prank, scandal, adventure, criminal conspiracy, or an early piece of “fake news” – fooled lie-detectors, handwriting experts, publishers, journalists, Swiss bank officials and very nearly the entire United States.
It featured disguises, an arcane codename, the world's most reclusive billionaire and, almost by chance, a president. By some accounts, it may have triggered the break-in at the Democratic National Committee which led to the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon.
The hoax's perpetrator? Clifford Irving, the globetrotting novelist and supposed biographer of the late American billionaire Howard Hughes. Hughes was known for being an eccentric and a recluse – perfect fodder for the plan Irving was to hatch.
Irving, who has died aged 87, had lived nearly as swashbuckling a life as Hughes whe