Click on the Case Number to view the image.

CASE #401- This fake of Jessica Alba appears on a very popular web site where it’s identified as a "CIA worthy" fake, meaning it is a very high quality fake that could fool just about anyone.  And, indeed we weren’t sure whether it was a fake or not the first time we saw it.  The quality of fakes is getting so good that it’s not uncommon to see fakes where there is absolutely no sign of fakery.  And when an actress seems to be appearing in sexier and sexier roles, you can’t depend upon what she’s done in the past as a gauge of what she’ll do today.  The only real indicator we had that the picture was a fake - before the head shot was located - is the fact that the head seems too small for the body, or the body belongs to a larger woman.  The proportions just don’t look right.  Nevertheless, we’ve given it a top rating because of its quality.  And it opens a new book of cases, which will almost certainly be the final book of Case Files of The Fake Detective.
 

CASE #402 - This fake of Sela Ward surprised us because we had absolutely no reason to think it was a fake until we began sorting our collection of pictures of Sela and suddenly noticed that we had two pictures that were almost - but not quite the same.  We had the scan of the version that was printed in some magazine, and we had a large, clear version we found on some celebrity newsgroup.  There was no doubt which was real.  And we could only scratch our heads and wonder why the magazine chose to go to such lengths to "censor" such an innocent and beautiful shot.  Best guess: They probably wanted people to focus on the clothes and not on the cleavage.

CASE #403 - This fake of Christina Applegate is large, clear and well done, so we can see why it fools people.  However, the first time we saw it we remembered the dress from somewhere.  Dresses which show that much of a beautiful woman tend to burn themselves into our collective memories.  When we realized the hair looked like it belonged to Sharon Stone, we soon realized the dress probably belonged to her, too.  (There was once a Rule #1 in making believable fakes: Never use a well-known celebrity for the body shot.  People will remember it.)  But to prove the picture is a fake we really only need the matching head shot of Christina, and we had that to close the case.    We found several shots of Sharon in the dress, but we had to wait for "JessicaJoanne" to send us the exact matching body shot to complete the image set.  Thanks JessicaJoanne.

CASE #404 - This fake of Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t very good, but it still fools people.  We’ve had it and the picture of James King in our files for a long time, but we never thought it was worthy of a case file.  However, if enough people ask about it, and if we’re in the right mood, and if we’re looking for cases to begin a new book of cases, all things fall into place to turn it into a Case File.  That's what happened with this one.

CASE #405 - This fake of Christina Applegate is fooling people for some unknown reason.  It’s not very large and it’s not particularly believable, but it must be on some web site where fakes do not ordinarily appear, because we get asked about it quite often.  So, even though it’s just a standard fake - from close to 200,000 celebrity fakes in circulation on the Net - enough factors fell into place for us to decide to turn it into a Case File.

CASE #406 - This fake of 20-year-old Charlotte Church is being peddled around the Internet as a shot taken with her cell phone camera and then accidentally released on the Internet - like the well-known Paris Hilton cell phone shots.  But cell phone cameras don’t take pictures of this quality, and it seems highly unlikely that Charlotte would take such a picture of herself, much less keep it in her cell phone.  Evidently, some fan was just intrigued by all those "topless" beach shots of Charlotte where her hands and arms were covering much of her breasts, and he wanted to see what she’d look like if she was truly topless.

CASE #407 - This fake of Patricia Heaton is in wide circulation and is said to be a picture taken when she went to a plastic surgeon to have the size of her breasts altered.  But it’s just a typical fake - and not a very good one - where a false story was created to explain why the celebrity would be posing topless.  The story is a bit more creative than most, but it’s still total baloney.

CASE #408 - This fake of Nikki Hilton (with her sister Paris) is one of a set of six fakes in wide circulation on the Net, where the fakes are fooling a lot of people.  The fakes are very well done by a well-known faker who calls himself "Vincent" (as in van Gogh).  When we first saw them, we quickly noticed that the same head shot was used to create fakes #1 and #6.  Plus, Paris Hilton’s hairdo in fake #4 is different from the hairdo in the other shots supposedly taken at the same time.  Since we don’t have a very large collection of pictures of Nikki, we created Wanted Poster #73 to find the head shot, but soon found that many people were aware of the entire series of real pictures of a model named "Diana" who is a waitress in Budapest, Hungary, and who was body painted by an artist there.  We thank "Benji" for supplying the matching real picture for fake #4 in the series.

CASE #409 - This fake of Hilary Duff is subtle enough to be believable, and it’s fooling a lot of people.  All the faker did was to find an image of a condom, digitally make it semi-transparent and overlay it upon a picture of Hilary with a semi-transparent handbag, and, presto change-o, it looks like the condom is in her handbag.  Clearly this is an instance where the picture generates the idea.  A semi-transparent handbag.  Hmmm.  What can I put in the handbag that would be most titillating to her male fans?  Answer: a condom.

CASE #410 - This fake of Jessica Alba fools people because it combines two real pictures of Jessica taken just a second or two apart.  One picture shows her smiling at the camera with the cloth flap on her dress properly in place, and the other shot shows her looking slightly to one side of the camera while a helpful breeze lifts aside the cloth flap to expose her left breast and nipple.  Since both pictures are real, why the faker needed to create the fake is anyone’s guess.  Could he have wanted to confuse people by showing the fake and the head shot together while claiming that all the shots where Jessica’s nipples are exposed are fakes?  If so, it didn’t work, since there are also video images of the incident.  And, since the faker also brightened the picture slightly to make her breast and nipple much more clearly visible, the fake also becomes a bit more unbelievable - even though it’s still a combination of real pictures of Jessica.  ‘Tis a puzzlement.

CASE #411 - This fake of Sally Field has always been suspected to be a "look-alike fake", meaning it was really a picture of someone other than Sally Field.  It reportedly first appeared in Celebrity Sleuth Magazine where they had a caption which asked their readers if the picture "could be" Sally Field.  Since that time it’s been in countless collections as being an actual picture of Sally.  On October 24, 1997, Wanted Poster #29 was created to find out who the woman really was.   Although we still don’t know the woman’s actual name, with the assistance of Lyall McRae, we now know the picture in question is a publicity still from an 8mm nudie short titled "Cowgirl Shootout" which was apparently made in the 1970’s and is  now distributed by Something Weird Video.  We give it a low rating because it takes no talent to create "fakes" like this, even though it can take many years to track down who the woman really is.

CASE #412 – These two fakes of Sheryl Crow are fooling a lot of people because they remember seeing them before, but they fail to remember that the originals showed her wearing panties – or they fail to notice that in the fake she’s not wearing panties.  The faker helped make the fakes seem real by leaving the original logo on the fakes, and he did a very good job of cloning away her panties and adding the necessary extras.

CASE #413 – This fake of Paris Hilton might seem unbelievable, but it first appeared on a very popular site where fakes are not normally seen.  The owner of that site was quickly informed that the picture was a fake, but by the time he acknowledged it and put the real picture on the site, too, the fake was already spreading across the Internet like ripples across a pond.  And no matter how quickly you correct an error, the correcting “ripples” will never catch up with the “error” ripples.  So, we’ll probably be seeing this fake around forever.

CASE #414 – This fake of Jennifer Love Hewitt has been around for a long time, but someone recently displayed it on a very popular celebrity site as being a real picture.  As a result, The Fake Detective was bombarded with e-mails from people asking about it.  And though we see it as a fairly routine job of faking a transparent blouse, and no better than the hundreds of similar fakes on the Net, we decided to create a case file for it just to end all the questions about this particular fake.

CASE #415 – This fake of Gwyneth Paltrow is quickly spreading across the Net, and it’s easily to see why it’s so believable.  It’s a fairly large fake and nearly flawless.  You have to examine it very carefully to see tell-tale indications of fakery.  The hair atop her head is frizzy and there’s an odd curl there where the hair is lifted by being against the chair.  A real celebrity photographer taking a picture of Gwyneth would make certain that every hair is in place.  Plus, the hair to the left side of Gwyneth’s face seems to have a hint of green in it, indicating that the real head shot probably had a green background.  We thank “Amstrad” for finding the body shot to expose this fake.

CASE #416 – This fake of Anna Kournikova is asked about constantly and appears to be on many web sites as being real.  It fools people because some parts of it are real and some parts are faked.  The entire fake magazine spread was created by a faker who calls himself “TMFU”.  He signed the fake by putting “TMFU FAKE” on the surfboard the faked nude of Anna is carrying.  The three pictures in the upper left corner are real pictures of Anna.  But the pictures on the left side are pictures of Anna with her bikini digitally removed.  Originally, because we didn't have the real pictures of Anna in our files, we thought the blonde was a look-alike with Anna's tattoo pasted on her back, but Xtobal corrected us on that.   This fake fools a lot of people because it’s very different from the typical fake.

CASE #417 – This fake of Maura Tierney has suddenly reappeared after being out of circulation for years.  It’s not a particularly good fake, but for some reason it’s fooling people once again.  To us, the head looks far too small for the body.  And the caption on the fake makes it even more unbelievable, since Cosmo isn’t likely to print such a picture on its cover.

CASE #418 – This fake of Natalie Portman has been around for at least a year, and it never seemed all that believable to us, but Natalie’s recent racy role “Closer” – and the fact that she’s recently appeared in public more than once wearing see-through dresses -  seems to have convinced people that she might actually pose this way.  She might, but this picture is still just a fake.

CASE #419 – This fake of Jeri Ryan fools an unusual number of people, even though there isn’t any real reason to believe it’s real.  Jeri has never posed that way, and it’s doubtful that she ever will.  The fake was created by a faker who calls himself “PruLogic” and who appears to have picked Jeri Ryan as his favorite subject.  He’s created dozens of fakes of her, maybe even more than a hundred.  This doesn’t seem to be his most believable fake, yet it fools the most people – possibly because it’s on some popular web sites where it’s claimed to be real.

CASE #420 – This fake of Kim Cattrall is close to the way she’s actually posed, so it’s easy to see how it can fool people.  Plus, she seems to have appeared topless or totally nude so often in “Sex and the City” and in various movies, that it’s assumed she would have no problem posing this way.  Her motto seems to be “If you’ve got it, flaunt it”.  However, while she’s still got it, she isn’t flaunting it to this degree.

CASE #421 – This fake of Gwen Stefani shouldn’t be believed, but we’ve been asked about it so many times that it’s a certainty that many people are fooled by it.  Maybe it’s in many collections as being real.  Or maybe there’s something about Gwen’s naughty public image that makes people believe she’s expose her breasts to a paparazzi cameraman.  We don’t know why people believe this fake, but we seriously doubt she’d ever do this sort of thing in public.

CASE #422 – This fake of the Olsen Twins has been around for awhile, and it seems to be fooling a lot of people.  It’s signed by the faker “Fat Bastard”, but his signature is evidently not recognized as the signature of a faker.  It’s really a fairly clever fake, even though there are odd errors: Why did the faker leave parts of the guy’s white shirt showing on the sleeve of his coat?  And the guy’s left arm seems to be missing the part between the shoulder and the elbow.  But, odd or not, it’s still a good example of what can be done with digital technology.

CASE #423 – This fake of Sharon Stone appeared on the Internet on March 15, 2006, in a collection of real pictures from a source that is normally reliable.  It’s a large, clear fake, and everyone seemed to accept it as real, since it seems to emulate what Sharon Stone did in the movie “Basic Instinct”.  But it seems highly unlikely that such a real picture would first appear on the Internet and not in some British tabloid.  And when was Sharon Stone ever NOT a blonde?  Plus, since the picture is so large and clear, we could see the body wasn’t Sharon Stone’s, because Sharon has a smallpox vaccination scar on her left shoulder.  We began to question it, and within 24 hours the real body shot was found and posted by “Wibble”.  But, if past experience is any gauge, the fake will be circulating forever anyway.

CASE #424 – This fake of Avril Lavigne is probably fooling people because other celebrities have had breasts pop out of their dresses when running from the paparazzi.  But this one is just a fake.  The faker evidently saw that he’d have to digitally lower the top to make the nipple seem real, but it wasn’t done enough and the nipple still appeared to be far too high on her breast.  We created Wanted Poster #77 to find the real picture, and it was supplied by “Spiny Norman” who found it on an Avril Lavigne website he knew about.  We thank “Spiny Norman” for the assist.

CASE #425 & #425a – These fakes of Christina Aguilera test the rules for what is “fakery” and what isn’t.  We don’t consider it fakery to adjust the brightness and/or contrast and/or other factors on a picture to bring out details which wouldn’t ordinarily be as clearly visible in the original.  But what about adjusting only parts of a picture?  In these fakes the faker adjusted only the area of her shirt.  Some might say that isn’t necessarily fakery.  Okay, not necessarily.  But what if further adjustments are made to parts within what was previously adjusted?  That’s where we draw the line, and we’ve illustrated the differences in the supplemental page which can be viewed by clicking HERE.  If someone simply adjusts the color to give a celebrity a red nose or to add bags under her eyes, is that fakery?  We think so.  Adjusting parts of a picture isn’t the same as adjusting a whole picture, in our opinion.  And it’s definitely fakery when adjusting those parts creates something that isn’t really there – even if it is just edges, shadows and tints.

CASE #426 – This fake of Michelle Trachtenberg has been around for many months, and we have been asked about it many times.  We always assumed it was a fake, even though it isn’t far beyond what she has really posed for, but we couldn’t find the exact matching head shot.  Wanted Poster #78 was finally created, and a week later “Jimmy” found the matching head shot to allow us to close this case and the Wanted Poster.

CASE #427 – This fake of Christina Aguilera has the faker’s signature on the original, but there are copies without the signature all over the place, and it’s fooling many people. It’s easy to see why.  Although it seems unlikely that such a picture could be real, the fakery is nearly flawless.  It’s only when the fake is seen side by side with one of the real pictures used to create it that the fakery becomes apparent – and even then there can be doubt.  It seems the faker used three pictures to create the fake: (1) The picture shown where Donald’s right arm is outstretched, (2) another picture where Donald’s right arm is in the same position as in the fake (but Christina may not even be in that picture) and (3) a picture of someone’s breasts.  One might think that it could still be two real pictures taken a moment apart, but when the fake is overlaid by the real picture, you can see that Christina hasn’t moved but the flowers and plants in the background have, which would be virtually impossible.

CASE #428 - This fake of Minnie Driver is being posted all over the Internet, probably by the person who created it.  It seems to be proving that if you post it in enough places, you are bound to find some people who will accept it as being real.  Actually, it's a pretty good fake.   The faker simply moved the hem up a bit and pasted someone elses pubic area on top of a shadow.  Anatomically, it almost certainly puts Minnie's crotch at least several inches lower than it really is, but who measures such things?   With so many actresses and models exposing their crotches to the media these days, that probably helps convince people this could be real.