Yesterday, Deadspin published a story on an ESPN.com freelance writer who was seemingly hired sight unseen after writing for a gambling website. The over 5,000-word story by John Koblin details how this writer, Sarah Phillips, got entangled into a scheme to purchase or in the case of the Deadspin story, outright steal Facebook and Twitter parody accounts in the guise of creating a sports comedy site. Shortly after Deadspin posted its story about Sarah Phillips, ESPN.com canned her and then all types of stories came out on her schemes to buy up the accounts and also how she with a partner attempted to scam people out of money. In addition, this Sarah Phillips not only misrepresented herself, she tried to conceal her identity by using another person’s pictures as Larry Brown Sports discovered.
Not only is Deadspin continuing to update its story, but it’s finding out more information on Phillips.
Aaron Nilsen writes how he was scammed by Phillips out of his Twitter account and how her partner attempted to threaten him.
Ben Koo from Awful Announcing then looks at Phillips buying up a popular Twitter parody account to filter traffic to her sports comedy website.
And then Ben investigates Phillips’ mysterious partner, Nilesh Presad, who seems to be the mastermind behind the scams.
Before Tuesday afternoon, Sarah Phillips was a blip on the radar screen. Now, she’s become a whole meme herself on Twitter. For her part, Phillips responded to the charges on her Twitter account.
Phillips has gone from Oregon sports fan, to a columnist for a sports gambling website to a freelancer for ESPN.com and alleged sports scammer in a relative short period of time.
Sawley Vickrey of Larry Brown Sports suggests that Phillips may have started to scam people to cover her own gambling debts.
Wherever this leads, I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of her. And one thing she should learn from all this is that when the internet goes against you, the world can be a very lonely place.
The only thing I can think of that can describe this whole story is OMC’s How Bizarre. Indeed how bizarre, how bizarre.
