January 2009: Soccer fans still mourn the loss of Moldovan legend Masal Bugduv. The 16-year-old prodigy was clearly destined for greatness; he even made the London Times' list of .

There's just one problem: Bugduv doesn't exist. As Slate's Brian Phillips explains, a determined hoaxer exploited the "trickle up nature of information flow" on the Web :

"...the player had originated in a series of posted to forums and blog comment sections, as if they'd been copied and pasted there.... The blog comments fooled the blogs, the blogs fooled the news sites, and the news sites fooled the magazines. When the Times came to Bugduv, his story was resting on a pedestal of widespread acceptance."

The Times quietly with an actual player, but by then it was too late. Notes Phillips: "In the end, the hoax laid bare what we had all dimly suspected: Sometimes, sportswriters do not know what they are talking about."