Members of the Ontario Provincial Police – legitimate ones – are moving to slow pulses over an e-mail hoax put out by someone posing as one of them.
The e-mail, authored by a “Captain Abraham Sands of the Ontario Provincial Police Department”, outlines a scheme whereby pranksters have stuck hypodermic needles into the underside of gas pump handles – needles infected with HIV-positive blood.
“Sands” goes on to report 17 incidents of folks being stuck with the needles while fueling up in just the past few months. The e-mail also goes on to say that “shockingly, of the 17 people who where (sic) stuck, eight have tested HIV positive and because of the nature of the disease, the others could test positive in a couple (of) years.”
The message ends with the dire warning that the culprits are still out there, and possibly sparking copycat attacks throughout the country.
Well, take a deep breath, folks; no such scheme exists. Southern Georgian Bay OPP Media Spokesperson Const. Peter Leon begins by denying the existence of a “Captain Abraham Sands” by warily pointing out that the hierarchy of the OPP does not include “captains” (“there are constables, sergeants, staff sergeants, inspectors, superintendents, chief superintendents, deputy commissioners and commissioners”).
The examples of misspelling also give away the phoney nature of the message.
What’s more, Leon says, the organization is legitimately dubbed the “Ontario Provincial Police, period”, without the suffix, “department”. He concludes that no such message has been passed around by the OPP.
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