This 27-Year-Old Used Facebook to Fool India
Arun P. Vijaykumar, a 27 year old, from the southern part of Kerala fooled the entire nation into believing he was going to be a research scientist at NASA. His deception only came to the front after reportedly Prime Minister Narendra Modi also began to take interest in his Vijaykumar’s supposed accomplishments.
The M.Tech. graduate from NIT, Bhopal described himself as a “news personality” on his Facebook page. He claimed that the US space agency had relaxed it citizenship restrictions because it was impressed by his knowledge and patriotism and in turn had selected him to join their ranks. He further asserted that he had been attending the prestigious MIT for further studies doing research under Dr. Barbara Lesko in learning theory. These claims were gladly picked up by news agencies around the nation. The Hindu even did a full interview with Vijayakumar, applauding his accomplishments.
But just recently Vijayakumar was forced to confess that all of this was just a bundle of lies after ‘Netizen Police’, a Facebook organization which investigates online fraud investigated and discovered the truth.
This story remind us of the Winston Churchill quote, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets a chance to get its pants on.” But, we must always remember that all lies come with an expiry date.
