Big Phat Liar

• Ginny

  +1

  The LA Times is starting an internal investigation. I'm imagining the newsroom like the one in The Wire....

  Posted 3/27/2008 [reply] [flag]

• benji23

  +1

  Pretty shoddy fact-checking ... Look at the guy - I wouldn't believe him if he said he was white and fat and ugly.

  Posted 3/27/2008 [reply] [flag]

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Links (39)

TSG Says Times Piece Based on Forged Documents
Published 3/26/2008 by eskay at Nah Right
The Smoking Gun website has published an extensive investigative piece that claims the report by L.A. Times writer Chuck Philips on the Tupac shooting at the Quad is based on forged documents. The article is pretty extensive, but it basically asserts that James Sabatino (pictured above), the mafia connected conman who was supposedly in on the ‘Pac hit, forged the FBI documents that Philips based much of his story on. And while Sabatino claims to have been provided the FBI reports during the discovery phase of a ...

Diddy-Tupac Shooting Story -- All a Big Hoax?
Published 3/26/2008 by TMZ Staff at TMZ.com
... So that explosive report last week by a Pulitzer Prize-winning L.A. Times reporter that linked P. Diddy to the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur? Looks like it was all a big hoax, perpetrated by a federal inmate who fabricated many of the "FBI reports" on which the story was based. According to The Smoking Gun , a con artist in Federal prison named James Sabatino created the documents that were the basis for the Times' March 17 report, which suggested that the 1994 shooting of Tupac was planned and perpetrated by Diddy and his associates. The supposed FBI reports and lawsuits ...

LINK: Was The L.A. Times Article on Tupac’s Shooting Based on Forged Documents?
Published 3/26/2008 by eskay at XXL
... FBI had no role whatsoever in the case. The official added that, at the time, investigators “had no inkling” of Sabatino’s supposed role in the rap music world and never saw investigative reports detailing his purported involvement with hip-hop’s leading figures or its assorted bloody disputes. When contacted by the Smoking Gun for comment, L.A. Times managing editor Marc Duvoisin stated that the paper would be launching its own investigation into the allegedly forged documents. Click here to read The Smoking Gun’s full report.

Diddy Was Punk'd
Published 3/26/2008 at WOW Report
... How did an imprisoned, overweight and disturbed white kid from Florida orchestrate the hoax that had the Los Angeles Times falsely claiming that Sean Combs was involved in the shooting of Tupac Shakur? (The Smoking Gun) ...

Report: Con Man at Center of “LA Times” 1994 Tupac Shooting Story
Published 3/26/2008 by Daniel Kreps at Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily
... that implicated Sean “Diddy” Combs and his associates in the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur has turned out to be a fraud by one of the shooting’s supposed architects, James “Jimmy” Sabatino, according to the Smoking Gun. The FBI documents, known as 302s, that LA Times writer Chuck Philips used as the source for his story were forgeries written by Sabatino while in prison. Protocol errors in Philips’ source documents lead to questions about their validity. The typewriter used to produce the fake documents was linked back ...

LAT's Tupac Shooting Scoop Based On A Hoax? [Scandals]
Published 3/26/2008 by Hamilton Nolan at Gawker
The Smoking Gun says that the LA Times' big investigative scoop last week implicating Bad Boy records chief Sean "Puffy" Combs in the 1994 shooting and robbery of rival rapper Tupac Shakur was based on fabricated evidence. The site says that James Sabatino (pictured)—an incarcerated con man who appeared as a player in the shooting in the LAT story—is actually a fabulist who forged the FBI reports that the paper relied on to build its investigation. TSG says that the supposed FBI reports implicating Puffy et ...

The Chuck Phillips Fiasco: When you lie with dogs, you get…..forged FBI documents from a hip hop compulsive liar
Published 3/26/2008 by missinfo at MissInfo.tv BLOG
... Basically, now I know why The Smoking Gun has been just posting tired-ass mug shots recently. They’ve been busy in the backroom, doing some hard-core investigative reporting on the hip hop’s most contentious investigative reporter. ...

Diddy Denied Connection to Tupac Shooting Because, Well, He Probably Wasn't Connected
Published 3/26/2008 by david at Jossip
... Diligent reporting from The Smoking Gun reveals the docs aren’t in any FBI database and that Sabtatino – “an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs’s trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion ‘Suge’ Knight” – was able to distribute them himself by conveniently redacting the names of the federal agents working on the case. Too bad there are other ways to search ...

LAT Tupac Shooting Story Maybe Based on False Evidence
Published 3/26/2008 at Radar: Fresh Intelligence Blog
... that hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was behind the 1994 shooting of Tupac that catalyzed the bi-coastal rap war which culminated in both the killing of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. Maybe not: The Smoking Gun today is now reporting that the Times' story was based largely on falsified FBI reports. According to TSG, the fabricated documents were the handiwork of an imprisoned 31-year-old con man named James Sabatino . Four months ago, Sabatino filed a $16 million civil suit against Combs over a decade-old business deal gone sour. The TSG now says that the two FBI ...

Report: 'L.A. Times' was hoaxed by con man
Published 3/26/2008 by Ann Oldenburg at USATODAY.com - Lifeline Live
Has The Los Angeles Ti mes been duped? The paper's report last week claiming that the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio was carried out by associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs was based largely on fabricated FBI reports, The Smoking Gun is reporting. (Diddy denied the story immediately.) A con man named James Sabatino, who is now serving time in Allenwood Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, is an accomplished document forger and swindler who apparently created an elaborate fantasy world filled with hip-hop luminaries and fake FBI documents. ...

Sabatino Suckered LA Times, FBI Reports Implicating Diddy Don't Exist
Published 3/26/2008 by Jen Carlson at Gothamist
... Today, The Smoking Gun calls the paper out by saying their scoop was a scam. Their main resource, James Sabatino (pictured), has likely fabricated evidence and forged FBI reports that were used by the paper. Not a hard story to swallow given Sabatino is a con man (and former consultant for Diddy's Bad Boy Records) currently residing behind bars. ...

LAT's Tupac Source: Serial Con Man [Jimmy Sabatino]
Published 3/26/2008 by Hamilton Nolan at Gawker
The Smoking Gun has a treasure trove of incriminating information on Jimmy Sabatino, the incarcerated serial con man who the site says forged documents that the LA Times relied on in its (now doubtful) scoop associating Puff Daddy with the 1994 shooting and robbery of Tupac Shakur. Sabatino's shady and unreliable nature was well known; back in 1999, the Miami New Times published a long feature story titled "Con Kid" that detailed Sabatino's history of outrageous scams that he used to hobnob with celebrities ...

The Tupac Conspiracy Continues
Published 3/26/2008 by skyobercam at Bossip
... 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.” This saga has gotten so convoluted over the years, it’s beyond ridiculous, SMH. Click here for more.

Chuck Phillips' latest Los Angeles Times ... [Crime]
Published 3/26/2008 by Anthony Miccio at Idolator
... Chuck Phillips' latest Los Angeles Times article implicating Sean Combs in the shooting of Tupac Shakur may have been based on fradulent FBI reports created by Frank Sabatino, a 31-year-old scam artist who likes to get up close and clerical with rap superstars. In 2011, Phillips will a reveal a new theory of the crime based on lyrics by the Game. [The Smoking Gun] ...

Chuck Phillips' 'Trusted Sources Played an Early April Fool's Joke
Published 3/26/2008 by nOvaMatic at SOULBOUNCE.COM
... Chuck Philips was a little less than warranted, fall back! The gods over at The Smoking Gun have revealed that Phillips' damning ...

Turtle Dupes The 'LAT' [Hoaxes]
Published 3/26/2008 by Seth at Defamer
... accusing Sean "Diddy-Puffy-Puff Daddy-Sean John-P.Diddy" Combs's associates of having carried out the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur were forged. The culprit? Incarcerated con man named James Sabatino, a portly wigga with a vivid imagination and a desperate need to inject himself by any means necessary into the great hip-hop events of the latter 20th Century. From The Smoking Gun's report: ...

Late Breaks: About that Diddy-Shot-Tupac Story...
Published 3/26/2008 by jbercovici at Portfolio.com: Mixed Media
... -Whoops! It looks like the Los Angeles Times fell for a con job when it reported that Sean "Diddy" Combs was implicated in a shooting of Tupac Shakur. [TSG] ...

Late Breaks: About that Diddy-Killed-Tupac Story...
Published 3/26/2008 by jbercovici at Portfolio.com: Mixed Media
... -Whoops! It looks like the Los Angeles Times fell for a con job when it reported that Sean "Diddy" Combs was implicated in the death of Tupac Shakur. [TSG] ...

Will Michelle Obama Be The Next Member Oprah's Book Club? [News Roundup]
Published 3/26/2008 by Moe at Jezebel
... ] Some guy made up a story about how Diddy knew about Tupac's assassination plot and the LA Times totally bought it but the source turned out to be a "wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as 'a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.'" [ TheSmokingGun ]

Jarah Is Better Than Baywatch
Published 3/26/2008 by bfred at Complex
... ] While investigating the 2Pac shooting, why did the LA Times believe this guy? [ Smoking Gun ] China has figured out how to control the weather. [ ...

Tupac Lives on in Buzz
Published 3/27/2008 at Yahoo! Buzz Log
... The only problem? The L.A. paper was duped. According to Smoking Gun, the report relied on FBI papers fabricated by a delusional, dumpy, and incarcerated con-man named ...

LA Times Apologizes for Fake Diddy-2Pac Story
Published 3/27/2008 by Rizoh at The Rap Up
... If you’re among those who seriously believe that Diddy had anything to do with 2Pac’s 1994 shooting, then you got your April Fool’s a little early this year. The Smoking Gun examined documents used in the LA Times story and found that they were created by a convicted con man and rap fan notorious for exaggerating his place in the hip-hop world. They also noticed that the so-called FBI documents seemed phony because they were written on a typewriter instead of a computer. Apparently the dumbass who created the fake documents didn’t realize that ...

Prison inmate cooked up scheme to tie Diddy to Tupac Shakur attack
Published 3/27/2008 by Celebitchy at Cele|bitchy
... The Smoking Gun has uncovered a conspiracy that falsely tied Diddy to the murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur. The LA Times claimed last week to have unearthed official FBI documents that tied Diddy to a planned shooting of Shakur in 1994, two years before his death. While the LA Times did not state that Diddy had any direct connection to Shakur’s murder, the implication was clear - he had a hand in intimidating him because he would not join Diddy’s growing record label. ...

Early buzz: Tupac, strong nerds, 'Battlestar' and more
Published 3/27/2008 by Whitney Matheson at USATODAY.com - Pop Candy
Good morning! Last night I finally caught up on all the episodes of Torchwood I'd missed while I was out of town and listened to about 15 new CDs. I had five crates of mail when I returned to work, and my desk is still in shambles. Slowly but surely, I'm getting it back together ... Some headlines: - The Los Angeles Times is apologizing for a story it ran last week about Tupac Shakur . Here's the Smoking Gun report that contributed to the apology. - We have a story about Maya Angelou in honor of her 80th birthday. - The Sundance Channel is ...

Nation Of Frauds [Daily Briefing]
Published 3/27/2008 by Sara K. Smith at Wonkette
... [Washington Post] Sovereign wealth funds — investment funds run by nation-states like Dubai, Kuwait, and Singapore — own massive portions of some American companies. [Washington Post] Whoopsy! The LA Times apologizes for a story linking Sean Combs to a 1994 attack on Tupac Shakur; the newspaper relied on "FBI documents" that turned out to be forged. The Smoking Gun figured this out in about 15 minutes. [Los Angeles Times, The Smoking Gun] More polls prove that a prolonged Democratic contest is "tearing apart the ...

You Punks Didn't Finish
Published 3/27/2008 by jsmooth@hiphopmusic.com (Jay Smooth) at Ill Doctrine
You Punks Didn't Finish March 27, 2008 Feeling sick so I can't go into as much depth as I'd like. But here are the links to the Smoking Gun expose and the ...

The LA Times Apologizes For Being Duped By Con-Artist In 1994 Tupac Shooting Article
Published 3/27/2008 by gooch at Sucker Free
... was dropped on the hip-hop world when an article by Chuck Philips appeared in the LA Times citing an unidentified FBI informant who claimed that a mafia-connected figure named James Sabatino and Jimmy Henchman set up Tupac in 1994 to curry favor with Diddy’s then growing Bad Boy Records empire. Diddy and Jimmy Henchman vehemently denied those claims and demanded a retraction from the LA Times. And it looks like they’ve gotten it, by default. Yesterday, The Smoking Gun published a report about James Sabatino, indicating that he’s a reputed ...

How the Sean Combs Gaffe in the L.A. ‘Times’ Proves David Simon Right — and Wrong
Published 3/27/2008 at Vulture
... In this case, Philips based his story about Combs's role in the killing of Tupac on FBI documents of uncertain provenance that The Smoking Gun revealed to be probable forgeries. Philips apologized for being duped, but maybe he simply wasn’t sufficiently skeptical (you know—like David Simon is!). After all, William Bastone, the editor of The Smoking Gun, said he investigated the documents because ...

It's official: Bol > The LA Times
Published 3/27/2008 by Bol at ByronCrawford.com
... Also, if you haven't already, you should check out the piece on the Smoking Gun about this guy Jimmy Sabatino. It's some fascinating shit. I'm sure it would make for a much more interesting Notorious B.I.G. film than the one that's being made right now - along the lines of Catch Me If You Can, but more hip-hop and more nucking futs. ...

Diddy Didn't Do It: "Dude Was Duped," Demur "LA Times" Dinks [Retractions]
Published 3/27/2008 by Anthony Miccio at Idolator
... was based on forged FBI reports, which the Smoking Gun reported yesterday. "In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job," says Phillips. Will this finally force Phillips to move on already? Or will he still unleash ...

L.A. Times on Diddy-Tupac allegations: 'Oops, maybe not...'
Published 3/27/2008 by Simon Vozick-Levinson at Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch
... Except, apparently, they did just that. Yesterday, The Smoking Gun posted an eviscerating takedown saying that the Times had been duped by a notorious forger who'd fabricated those FBI reports out of whole cloth. And the paper has now posted ...

The LA Times = The Baltimore Sun on The Wire
Published 3/28/2008 by Stone at The Couch Sessions
... Said documents were those of con man James Sabatino, of what The Smoking Gun calls  “little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as ‘a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.’” ...

What A Web (of lies) The L.A. Times Weaves
Published 3/28/2008 at Music Blog
... hip-hop beef,” but also insinuated that hip-hop impresarios Sean “P.Diddy” Combs and Jimmy (Henchmen) Rosemond (manager, of The Game and co-founder of Czar Entertainment) were somehow involved in the 1994 shooting of Tupac at Quad Studios in New York. But that’s not the worst part. The person who Phillips relied for much of this information, is an alleged “wannabe” mobster and federal inmate, James Sabitino, who ultimately was called out by The Smoking Gun in their March 26th report “Big Phat Liar” . TSG’s story totally undermined the credibility of Chuck Phillips (who was ...

Adding Transparency To The Critical Process: The Hanging' Judge And Being Wined And Dined
Published 3/30/2008 by Variety.com * at The Set List
... It was actually a week spent on jury duty, which kept me away from the computer and weighing in on the Tupac forgery fiasco, Dolly Parton's ...

"LA Times" Finally Retracts Latest "Diddy Knew!" Tupac Expose [Apologies]
Published 4/7/2008 by Anthony Miccio at Idolator
... that it had been hoaxed by its "confidential sources" immediately following a March 27 debunking of the story on The Smoking Gun, but only today did it announce a full retraction of the original article, written by longtime Diddy conspiracy theorist Chuck Phillips. ...

Tupac Truth: L.A. Times Betta' Ask Somebody
Published 4/10/2008 by Madison J. Gray at Black Voices Blogs
... New York recording studio, and that Diddy knew in advance of the shootings were never found to be credible. In fact, it turns out that one of the main people named in the report is really a prison con man, a liar about his Hip Hop street cred, and faked the funk about his involvement in the incident. This means that the document that the story is based on doesn't hold water and the Times can no longer stand behind the article. Actually the article would have kept rolling, but T he Smoking Gun busted the investigation wide open simply because the website specializes in ...

into the devil's nest
Published 4/18/2008 by Rafi Kam at Oh Word
... The place holding down hip-hop journalism right now isn’t the Smoking Section… it’s The Smoking Gun. In the span of three weeks, the Smoking Gun has dropped the two craziest hip-hop stories of the year. First they exposed the shoddy journalism of the LA Times and how a con-man served as the source for the paper’s controversial Tupac story. Now they’ve exposed the phony, ...

Diary Of A Mad Blogger…
Published 4/18/2008 by the_dallas at dallaspenn.com
... our blogroll. We got day jobs and we’re mostly in it for the groupies. Forget the magazine stands, the Complex/Rawkus/Harris Pub/Viacom/Quincy Jones conglomerates. The SOHH whats and AllHipHops… Forget all those page-view pushers, what the fuck are they good for? The place holding down hip-hop journalism right now isn’t the Smoking Section… it’s The Smoking Gun. In the span of three weeks, the Smoking Gun has dropped the two craziest hip-hop stories of the year. First they exposed the shoddy journalism of the LA Times and how a con-man served as the source for the paper’s ...

LA Times effs up again: wrong Evidence featured
Published 5/29/2008 by Enigmatik (noreply@blogger.com) at Boo Goo Doo Boom
... As if their last screw up wasn't enough, the LA Times continues their hip hop misinformation campaign by portraying Evidence of Dilated Peoples as a graffiti artist who was recently arrested on felony vandalism charges. Evidence of Dilated Peoples is speaking out against The Los Angeles Times, who recently ran a cover story about the arrest of a notorious Los Angeles graffiti artist, but mistakenly ran pictures of the rapper/producer on the front page. Police arrested Cyrus “Buket” Yazdani on felony vandalism charges for his daring works of graffiti, including one highly ...