I’m a bit late to this one, but this hoax was picked up by a decent number of publications. Murray Dick has a good summary:
The story in question (now amended, here) concerned the conviction of a 13-year old Texan boy for stealing his dad’s credit card and using it to hire two prostitutes with which to play Play Station (awww!).
It was, according to its author, an experiment in linkbaiting…
Proving that the mainstream media are just as prone to hoaxing as the rest of us, London’s favourite paper-based tube-seat cover Metro was duped, as was it’s pay-per-use competitor The Sun, and The Telegraph (now erased from the Telegraph’s archives AND not in the Internet Archive either - tut).
Wired failed to get an official response from Google in regard to what (if any) action they might take on publishers who exploit ‘linkbaiting’ in the form of hoaxing – (it’s not there now – did anyone spot the story in Google News at all?).
Some have rightly pointed out though that Google is hardly in a position to dish out punishment to sites who dabble in linkbaiting in any case, given their own history of hoaxing – see Google Tisp and (something the MSM are not averse to either)…
