Thursday, January 29, 2009

Another blankedy-blank zombie

Almost exactly a year ago, reports came out that a fairly well-known (in some circles) etsy shop owner and designer of sock patterns had passed away. There was a lot of attention: some of her patterns were sold to benefit charity; I think there may have even been collections taken up to send to her family. People she'd owned product to were told there was no money to refund to them, and most of them just felt so badly that this had happened on top of everything else, that they walked away. Those that were still upset were told to get over it -- the family had been through enough.

A couple of months later, a fairly popular yarn dyer in New Mexico, probably inspired by the outpouring of love for the above situation, sent out emails - purportedly from family members - announcing that she was very ill. Then a few days later, that she'd died. There was no money to refund outstanding orders, and they couldn't replace the shabbily-dyed yarn others had actually received. Oh, but we do have stock in the garage and it's for sale, cheap. (image source)

People called shenanigans almost immediately. Sleuthing turned up new business names in the works, with the same address and phone number. Then the zombie dyer was spotted at the bank. I wrote about it a little bit on the old blog. The dyer created a couple of "sock puppet" accounts and posted as her sister (which she didn't have) and a family friend, but finally just gave up and went away.

Weeeel. Remember that first woman? The one whose tragic demise gave the zombie dyer the idea in the first place? Still alive.

I'm not saying more than this, because the sleuths that figured it out are going to be putting together a nice big stack of proof and sharing that online in the very near future. It's been leaked in a couple of places, but I won't give any clues right now. I've seen enough evidence with my own two eyes to be 100% convinced that this person is still alive or - also terrible - that someone has stolen her identity. But the former is the more likely explanation.

Oh, except to give a bit of advice: if you're going to fake your death on the internet, get a new email address.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh! Thank you! All I'd seen were some cryptic "we don't want to start any rumors" posts, which, I think, starts more rumors than other posts. Um.

Also, I love your image for this bit!

Anonymous said...

Holy mackerel. Will people stop at nothing? Clearly not. I had heard something about this, but I'm truly in the dark about most of it. Unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

I really hate people sometimes. Why do they have to be so mean and so unconsiderate and so so stupid? There's a few notorious internet swap-lifters who never change their email address or mailing address either. What is wrong with those people!