What Eliot Ness Was to Gangsters, PR Guy is to Athlete ID Thieves on Twitter
Brendan Wilhide’s increasing high-profile Twitter enforcement role doesn’t provide more than the satisfaction of a job well done.
But the 26-year-old Connecticut public relations specialist is, in his spare time, the Eliot Ness of the social networking website, as far as imposters seeking to assume the personas of well-known athletes are concerned, reports the Wall Street Journal.
His Sportsin140.com website gives a boost to his efforts to eliminate imposters assuming athletes’ identities by publicizing known fakes. However, much of his initial work involves simply fact-checking and common sense. (Is it likely, he wondered at one point, that forward Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets would suddenly set up a Twitter account in the midst of the NBA playoffs last May?)
A spokeswoman says Twitter reaches out to verify celebrity accounts, and slip-ups, it appears, could be costly: Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals sued Twitter in June after an imposter set up an account in his name that joked about the deaths of former major-league players, the newspaper reports. An out-of-court settlement resulted.
