Teenagers’ Sex on the Net Is a Hoax, Firm Says

An improbable plan for two Southern California teens to broadcast their first sexual encounter on the Internet is a moneymaking hoax, according to a Seattle company hired to provide the computer equipment for the event.

Internet Entertainment Group, which had signed a contract to supply the computer hardware, said organizers planned to charge Internet users $5 each and then not deliver on their promise that the couple would have sex.

IEG President Seth Warshavsky said the supposed 18-year-olds were going to have AIDS tests and pick out condoms leading up to their Aug. 4 event and charge viewers for “age-verification” purposes. Then on the actual day, the couple would decide they were not ready for sex, he said.

Mark Vega, the lawyer and spokesman for the couple, identified as “Mark and Diane,” did not return repeated phone calls, but said in a letter posted on IEG’s Web site that the charges were false and defamatory.

Warshavsky said he was informed Friday by Ken Tipton, the organizer of the event, that it was aimed at fooling more people than Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” 60 years ago. That realistic radio drama duped millions of Americans into thinking that Earth was being invaded by Martians.

Warshavsky said Tipton had been using the pseudonym Oscar Wells up until the day he signed the contract with IEG.

Wells was the registered owner of the https://www.ourfirsttime.com Web site and was quoted in a number of early stories about the event. But subsequent checks by The Times showed no public record of Wells’ existence and that his phone number was the same as that of a Studio City production company owned by Tipton, a small-time actor and filmmaker.

“He said the reason he was calling himself Oscar Wells was that this was going to be the 60th anniversary of ‘War of the Worlds’ and this was going to be bigger. The whole thing was kind of a media hoax,” Warshavsky said.

Heather Dalton, IEG’s spokeswoman, said: “They were not going to go ahead with the act. They were not going to have sex on the Internet, and they were also going to charge $5 to view the site.”

Attorney Vega said Thursday that the site had attracted “hundreds of millions” of viewers. He said viewing the event would have been free and that it “was not about making money.”

IEG said it became involved with the project Thursday.

But 24 hours after signing the contract, it said, it pulled out because it suspected the organizers’ motives and believed the event would not deliver.

IEG hosts a variety of steamy Web sites and is best known for selling the sex video of actress Pamela Anderson and rocker Tommy Lee.

Since plans for the event came to light earlier this week, many critics have been concerned that the event was either a cyberspace hoax or a moneymaking scheme.

But Vega, who specializes in 1st Amendment cases at a well-known Los Angeles law firm, has maintained the event was for real and about freedom of speech.