Stephen Glass
Stephen Glass was a reporter for The New Republic magazine during the late 1990s. When in 1998 it was discovered that he had committed several cases of journalistic fraud, the magazine fired Glass and his career in journalism came to an end.
The story which triggered these events was called "Hack Heaven", and concerned a 15 year old computer hacker who extorts a large company after breaking into their computer system. Like several of Glass' previous stories, "Hack Heaven" depicted events that were almost Forbes Magazine reporter Adam Penenberg presented evidence to The New Republic that the story was fabricated and that the company depicted in it (Jukt Micronics) did not in fact exist. An internal review by TNR confirmed this, and found that Glass had created a shell website and voice mail account for the company in order to fool TNR's fact checkers. TNR also determined that 27 of 41 stories written by Glass for the magazine contained fabricated material.
After TNR fired Glass, nothing further was heard from him until 2003 when he began appearing on television to promote his "biographical novel" The Fabulist. A movie detailing Glass' experiences called Shattered Glass completed production in June 2003.
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