Technically Speaking

Ever since I posted an article about the Liebermann Inc’s Grand Canyon Display, there has been a lot of controversy about it being a hoax. Stuart, a reader/visitor of my site, left a comment that points out some facts about the Liebermann Inc company. It is a great debate, as of late, whether the company is legit or not. There is loads of information disproving the company’s legitimacy and almost none supporting it. Below is a quote of a letter correspondence to Liebermann Inc. Ron, who as commented here earlier, mentioned to me in an email that Forbes has retracted their story about Liebermann Inc. To me this is a strong indication that Liebermann Inc. probably isn’t real. Form your own conclusions.

Introduction

On September 22, 2003 I was first made aware of this company’s (fictitious) display product known as the Grand Canyon. I looked briefly at the press release on their site and thought: “oh that’s cool, but too exotic for me.” On Thursday the 25th, I somehow got the idea that there was a controversy over the legitimacy of Liebermann, Inc. I went back to their site, and went to their home page for the first time. I was immediately suspicious and, with Steve’s help, we pieced together a lot of the scam that evening. Aside from outlandish claims, general unrealism and a broken e-commerce system, there were numerous other discrepancies contained within their site. Most surprisingly and amusingly, several Mac news sites, and even Forbes.com were befooled by this hoax — and continue to believe that it’s real. [Forbes has since come to its senses.]

This is a very clever hoax, and is responsible for a good solid 48 hours of enjoyment on our part. So thanks, Lisa! (Read on for details.) [10/1: not sure what to call this anymore.]

This is the best entertainment that Hollywood has produced in recent history.

Email Correspondence

At 5:52pm on 9/28, we sent the following email to lisa_ciesniewski@go-l.com:

Dear Lisa Ciesniewski,

We would like to give you the opportunity to read and respond to a
page we’ve created on the Web. The page lists some information we
have been able to gather about Liebermann Inc and Miguel Liebermann,
and also cites public sources for that information. Please point out
any information that you know to be inaccurate, and cite sources so we
can verify what you tell us. We will post your complete, unedited
response to this email.

http://plex.us/outbursts/liebermann.html

We also have three questions we hope you can answer:

1) Can you give us more info about Miguel Liebermann, such as his age,
his prior work (besides for Coca Cola), and what well-known
publication his name may have appeared in? As you can see from our
page, we don’t believe he’s real, so we will need more proof.

2) Can you provide us with the name of another executive besides Mr.
Liebermann, and provide concrete, verifiable sources for this
information?

3) Is your manufacturing/shipping/warehouse located at 3143 Encinal
Ave or is it 8726 S. Sepulveda Blvd #B-161?

Thank You, -Page creators Sam & Steve

We received the following response:

Return-Path:
Delivered-To: samswett.com-sam@samswett.com
Received: (qmail 67931 invoked from network); 28 Sep 2003 22:57:14 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO mail12.atl.registeredsite.com) (64.224.219.86) by 0 with SMTP; 28 Sep 2003 18:57:14 -0400
Received: from imta01a2.registeredsite.com (imta01a2.registeredsite.com [64.225.255.10]) by mail12.atl.registeredsite.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h8SMD8Bb012607 for Sun, 28 Sep 2003 18:13:08 -0400
Received: from ewbjz2evck3zmas.go-l.com ([24.130.251.141]) by imta01a2.registeredsite.com with ESMTP id <20030928231139.WBSJ13923.imta01a2.registeredsite.com@ewbjz2evck3zmas.go-l.com> for Sun, 28 Sep 2003 19:11:39 -0400
Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030928160551.00b70988@pop.registeredsite.com>
X-Sender: legal@go-l.com@pop.registeredsite.com
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 16:11:54 -0700
To: Samuel Swett
From: legal@go-l.com
Subject: Re: Questions about Liebermann Inc.
In-Reply-To:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii”; format=flowed

Att: Mr. Swett

Liebermann Inc. began doing business with the general public on Monday,
September, 22nd, 2003, and since that time we have experienced both the
good and the bad capabilities of the Web. Most individuals and organization
contacting us have applauded our products and business philosophy. A few
others have chosen to attack our credibility and our systems.

To those who applaud us, we’ll be honored to be chosen as your next
provider of high quality windows based computer hardware and display
products, and hope that by exploring our product’s exceptional
capabilities, we can help you in accomplishing your computing tasks faster,
better and with greater productivity than ever before, while becoming as
successful as we intend to be.

For those who believe that personal and corporate attacks are appropriate,
we would recommend researching two words: Liable and Slander.

Any that individuals and organizations identified as actively involved and
directly or indirectly responsible for propagation of such actions such as
yourself and others, will face severe legal procedures to the full extent
of the laws governing these matters, as our legal department has a complete
understanding of the two words mentioned above, and the governing laws that
protect both individuals and corporations alike.

Thank you for your continuing interest and support.

Liebermann Inc.

And here’s our reply to that at 6:53pm on 9/28:

Can you be specific at all? We asked several specific questions which
should be easy to answer, and will put the whole issue to rest.
-Sam & Steve

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2003 at 9:18 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.