The hoax

Clifford Irving, whose scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the s, died after being admitted to hospice care aged She said he had been admitted there after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a week earlier. Author Clifford Irving is seen as he enters federal court in New York.

The author, who's scheme to publish a phony autobiography of billionaire Howard Hughes created a sensation in the s, died after being admitted to hospice care aged This is a less profitable rouse than that of The Hitler Diaries.

Why was forensic science important for closing the hughes hoax case

Konrad Kujau faked sixty volumes of journals that he claimed were written by Adolf Hitler. The books were bought for 9. Clifford Irving's elaborate ruse became the subject of the movie 'The Hoax,' starring Richard Gere. Irving served 17 months in federal prison for fraud after Hughes emerged to condemn the work as a fabrication.

The bogus autobiography wasn't published until , when it was printed as a private edition. The scam 'was exciting. It was a challenge. It became an adventure,' Irving told the Los Angeles Times in The International Herald Tribune called the fake autobiography 'the most famous unpublished book of the 20th century. Irving said the idea of fabricating an autobiography of Hughes came to him after reading a magazine article about the billionaire's eccentric lifestyle.