Media Article # 518

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

[Media attention in Wisconsin attracts scammers]

NBC 5i

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Wis. -- A group of hunters from Florida headed to Wisconsin recently in search of the legendary Bigfoot.

Searching For Bigfoot is a group that travels across the country trying to prove the existence of the creature.

Group members combed through a wooded area in Wisconsin after they received a lead that a resident had spotted a figure resembling a Bigfoot.

The group spent several hours in the forest trying to find physical signs of Bigfoot's presence, but came up empty handed.

A Wisconsin man swears a 7-foot animal bigger than a bear jumped into the back of his pickup truck, NBC Milwaukee station WTMJ reported.

The man, whose job it is to clean up deer carcasses after accidents, didn't want to go on camera. However, he claimed he loaded a dead deer on his truck and began filling out paperwork when he felt the truck shake.

He told WTMJ that he then saw a creature resembling a Bigfoot stealing the deer carcass from his truck.

The station also reported that others had recently claimed to see Bigfoot in northern Wisconsin.

This is pathetic.

"Searching For Bigfoot" is NOT a group, but rather one well known scam artist named Tom Biscardi, who is NOT trying to "prove the existence of the creature". Biscardi is seeking media attention, hoping it will bring him some kind of financial sponsorship.

Financial sponsorship will forever elude Biscardi from this point forward, because crypto-historians like Loren Coleman will not hesitate to expose his decades-long history of hoax schemes and high-profile scams related to the bigfoot subject.

These days Biscardi is banking that media attention will bring him a new audience that might not be aware of his fraudulent past. So, like the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Biscardi can be expected to appear whereever local or national media seems to be temporarily hot on the bigfoot topic. His recent appearance in Wisconsin, after CNN and other news media outlets reported on the supposed deer-nabbing incident in the Milwaukee region, is purely an attempt to take advantage of the media attention there.

Biscardi does not do any kind of field research. He will quickly move on to the next location where the local media is covering a bigfoot story.

People who have been present when Biscardi has arrived somewhere to take advantage of press attention, say he attempts to do what he *thinks* the BFRO does in the field (based on some of the BFRO's publicly-released expedition reports) but his show is a laughable, misinterpreted version of what the BFRO does.

Thankfully, reporters are becoming more aware of Biscardi's background and methods, and are increasingly seeking information about him from the BFRO and Loren Coleman, before they become unwitting accomplises to his scams.

______________________________

The BFRO has a Wisconsin chapter (formed during the 2006 expedition in Price County, Wisconsin). Members of the WI-BFRO are preparing to investigate these recent incidents outside Milwaukee. Assistance already has been offered to the BFRO by local law enforcement officers. We invite more assistance from those quarters -- local law enforcement officers, forestry workers, rangers, firefighters (search and rescue), etc., in southeast Wisconsin. If you fall into one of these categories and you are interested in assisting, please send an email to the BFRO's coordinator, B.G., in southeast WI at tenw40@wi.rr.com.

B.G. works for the city of Milwaukee as an MIS specialist (computer programmer / web developer). He attended both of the Wisconsin expeditions in 2006. He was also one of the thirteen people who witnessed the rock-throwing encounter on the recent West Virginia expedition (see homepage).

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