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Fake identities: Manti Te'o scandal and 6 other Internet hoaxes

4. 'Dave on Wheels' exposed

Jake Turcotte/CSMonitor
While only some Internet hoaxes are exposed, it seems that they are common on the Web. The perpetrators behind them often assume fake identities and trick people into believing the elaborate stories and characters they create.

  • By Steph Solis

Entertainment site theCHIVE reported on Oct. 15 that a 24-year-old deaf paraplegic blogger known as David Rose was a fraud.

David Rose had inspired thousands through his blog, Dave on Wheels. He even had celebrities like Kim Kardashian retweeting his motivational statements. His readers believed he was a deaf quadriplegic, as a result of cerebral palsy, and that he used a Tobii ocular reader that tracked his eye movements.

The person behind the hoax was Nichole Rose, originally believed to be the blogger's sister. In early October, she announced that David Rose had entered the hospital to be treated for pneumonia. A few days later she posted on Facebook and on his blog, claiming that he died. 

One of David Rose’s readers, Kristi-Anne Beil, came across one of "David's" photos on another site shortly after and found that one photo actually belonged to Hunter Dunn, a young man with cerebral palsy. After finding Mr. Dunn's photo, Ms. Beil revealed that David Rose’s tweets were sent from TweetDeck. (TheCHIVE's John Resig later noted that someone using Tobii ocular reader would never use TweetDeck).

It was around the same time that Sarah Hill, an online friend of David Rose from theCHIVE booked a flight to Los Angeles to join Ms. Rose at the funeral. When the sister made up an excuse to avoid meeting, Hill went to others from theCHIVE. Co-founders Leo and John Resig, searched for a death certificate for David Rose. They found nothing.

Beil published a blog post raising questions about "Dave," prompting the blogger to identify herself as Nichole Rose. She apologized to Dunn and to the readers, she said David Rose was “just a character, a part of my psyche."

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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