E-mail hoax leads callers to wrong number
Last Updated: Friday, November 24, 2006 | 10:53 AM AT
CBC News
The phone won't stop ringing at the home of a Fredericton man who shares his name with a fake soldier named in a hoax e-mail that has been making its way across the country.
Gary Hogan and his partner Michelle Millen moved to Fredericton more than a year ago, and since then, their phone has been ringing at least five times a week with callers asking for a woman named Cindy.
Millen says at first, she believed the calls were just wrong numbers.
"I had noticed a lot of the calls were coming from different places like Ontario and stuff. They weren't coming from around here, so I also thought maybe this Cindy Hogan had just moved to the area as well," she said.
But Millen says the conversations began to get a bit stranger. Callers would tell her they were praying for Cindy.
Someone else called to say they had natural cures to offer.
Then she found out about the e-mail hoax. The chain letter is supposed to be a plea from a soldier serving in Iraq named Gary Hogan. He asks readers to pray for his wife, Cindy Hogan, who has just been diagnosed with cancer.
The letter says the couple lives in Fredericton.
Millen says she's considered getting an unlisted phone number. "You know, I don't mind, but it does get you wondering, is this phone call for me or is this going to be for Cindy?"
Some websites about urban legends say the e-mail didn't start out as a hoax. They say the real letter was sent out by a man named Gary Hogman, when his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2001. They say Gary and Cindy Hogman live in Texas.
