Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/John F. Kennedy document hoax/archive1
In 1993, about 350 documents were forged by Lawrence X. Cusack III. These papers purported to be from, or related to, John F. Kennedy. Some of them alleged that Kennedy had a secret first marriage and dealings with organized crime, had bribed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and paid hush money to Marilyn Monroe. Cusack, son of a lawyer who had dealings with Monroe's family, claimed to have found the papers in the firm's files. He sold them for between six and seven million dollars. One of the buyers suggested showing them to Seymour Hersh, who was writing The Dark Side of Camelot (1997). Hersh began incorporating them into his book and proposed a TV documentary. Checks by the networks uncovered flaws in the forgeries. These included the use of a ZIP Code, in a paper dated two years before the ZIP Code was introduced, and a typeball that had not yet been invented. Cusack was convicted of fraud, sentenced to nearly ten years in prison and ordered to refund the money to the buyers. (Full article...)