A lawsuit filed in the name of the man who shot former U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is bogus, a federal official says.
Attorneys for convicted killer Jared Lee Loughner notified the court that Loughner didn't file or authorize the lawsuit, said Cosme Lopez, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office District of Arizona.
Loughner is serving life in prison after pleading guilty to killing six and injuring 13 during a January 2011 mass shooting in Tucson that targeted Giffords as she hosted a political gathering.
None of the attorneys listed for Loughner has returned calls or emails from The Associated Press. A spokesman for Giffords says she is not commenting on the matter.
The fake lawsuit was sent from Philadelphia, and Loughner is imprisoned in Minnesota.
This was not the first fake lawsuit filed in high-profile cases.
Another hoax involved a $10 million lawsuit supposedly filed against Uber by Jason Dalton, the Uber driver who is accused of killing six people and injuring two in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Feb. 20, ABC News reported March 17.
The handwriting did not match Dalton’s and the mail was routed through Philadelphia, rather than Grand Rapids, Michigan, where mail from the jail that houses Dalton is sorted, ABC News reported.
The Tampa Bay Times reported on March 8 that a hoaxster requested a restraining order in federal court against presidential candidate Donald Trump on behalf of former KKK leader David Duke.
Duke denied he filed the documents, which had a return address in Louisiana, where Duke lives, but were postmarked in Philadelphia.
In April 2014, Fox News reported a lawsuit supposedly filed by Jodi Arias, convicted in the 2008 killing of her boyfriend in Mesa, against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was a hoax.
The return address on the lawsuit was incorrect and Arias’ lawyer denied filing the lawsuit alleging Arias contracted Hepatitis C from a tuberculosis shot administered by jail staff. The suit also alleged Arpaio placed video cameras in Arias’ cell and sold the videos to the media.
In January, Buzzfeed reported on a 2014 lawsuit purportedly filed by Cliven Bundy, the father of the leader of the recent standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge, alleging President Barack Obama threatened to hurt Donald Trump’s business interests if Trump didn’t stop questioning Obama’s place of birth.
Bundy’s wife said the family did not file the suit. The return address on the lawsuit was a prison in Pennsylvania.
