Hoax Against Taylor Fit Pattern, Publicist Says

The 23-year-old Michigan man who gained national publicity in a hoax that linked him romantically with Elizabeth Taylor is an aspiring actor who previously has tried to plant false stories about his career, Taylor’s publicist said today.

Chen Sam, Taylor’s spokeswoman, said Julian Lee Hobbs, a high school dropout from Lake Orion, Mich., was the focus of the weekend hoax engineered by a woman who used a secret code to intercept Sam’s answering service.

No one so far has stepped forward to take responsibility for the hoax.

Hobbs’ attorney was quoted by the Detroit News today as saying his client had never met the Oscar-winning actress. His stepmother told the newspaper, “He likes to create his own publicity.”

The hoaxer called Sam’s answering service and used a secret code to identify herself as an employee, calling herself Lisa Flowers.

She returned phone calls from reporters and said Hobbs flew in from Detroit and spent the weekend at Taylor’s side.

Sam said Tuesday that Taylor, 58, was trying to ignore the story. “Her priority right now is to get well,” she said, adding that her attorneys are conducting an investigation and trying to decide whether to pursue criminal charges.

According to reports in the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, Hobbs left high school after his sophomore year and moved to the Los Angeles area, where he spread stories about his success as a rock singer and international model.

Sam said today that in the course of tracking down the source of the story, she was told that Hobbs has tried to hoax journalists before.

“In all my calls yesterday, I’d spoken to one or two journalists here in the United States in different cities,” she said. “Two papers in Michigan said they’d interviewed him and, when they went to do their research, it turned out he hadn’t done any work.”