LA Times '94 Tupac Shooting Report Based On Hoax?

Last week's LATimes.com story linking Diddy to the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur may have been a big hoax, planned by a federal inmate.

In a report by TheSmokingGun.com (TGS), it is said that the documents and unnamed source used largely as the basis of the paper's March 17 story were all "fabricated FBI reports," and prepared by James Sabatino, who hoaxed the Times for attention.

The Times piece, published exclusively online and written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chuck Philips, claimed that the '94 shooting of Shakur was orchestrated by hip-hop executive Jimmy "Henchman" Rosemond, and Sabatino, a promoter and son of a captain in the Colombo crime family.

In the story, Philips alleged that the attack on Tupac was payback for Shakur refusing to sign to Bad Boy Records and employ Henchman as his manager, as well as the slain rapper's insistence that he did not share the blame for the rape charges he was then on trial for with his co-defendant, Jacques "Haitian Jack" Agnant, a friend of Rosemond's.

However, the most shocking piece of information revealed in the story was that Diddy and late rapper Notorious B.I.G. were informed, beforehand, that Shakur was walking into a trap, and that it was done to curry favor with the Bad Boy Records founder.

Despite the report, both Diddy and Rosemond had adamantly dismissed the validity of the report -- Diddy called it "beyond ridiculous."

TSG reports that Sabatino, the main source behind the article, is merely a "con man and accomplished document forger, an audacious swindler who has created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries, conducted business with Combs, Shakur, Busta Rhymes, and The Notorious B.I.G., and even served as Combs's trusted emissary to Death Row Records boss Marion 'Suge' Knight during the outset of hostilities in the bloody East Coast-West Coast rap feud."

The site even alleges that Sabatino "a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug," as said by his own father via a letter to a federal judge.

31-year-old Sabatino, who is currently an inmate at the Allenwood federal penitentiary in White Deer, Penn., is depicted as an overzealous hip-hop fan who attempted to "insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur's shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G."

Included in the Time's story was a PDF of two key FBI interview reports, and an additional third purported FBI interview report was included by Sabatino in court papers he filed four months ago in U.S. District Court in Miami, where he sued Diddy for $16 million alleging that he was not paid for old recordings and video footage of Notorious B.I.G. from back in 1994. This complaint was prepared and filed by Sabatino himself from the Allenwood.

Those FBI reports, however, are nowhere to be found in the bureau's computerized Automated Case Support database, according to TSG. The database allows investigators to search various bureau indices to determine whether particular individuals, groups, or topics have been referred to in FBI "302" reports or various other bureau documents.

TGS said that the purported "302" documents vary sharply from standard FBI reports in terms of phraseology and use of certain acronyms, several law enforcement sources who examined the documents said. They were also riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, and created by typewriters, which agents said have not been used for 30 years.

And as for the claim that Sabatino's father was (or is) a member of the mafia, that is directly contradicted by NYPD and FBI lists of Colombo family members.

TSG reports that the Times' Philips and Marc Duvoisin, the deputy managing editor who edited the Times story, were given an account of TSG's findings. In response, Duvoisin said that the newspaper would launch its own investigation to determine if the FBI documents cited in its story are real.

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