CLIFFORD IRVING HOWARD HUGHES HOAX

Elaborate literary fraud perpetrated by novelist Clifford Irving between 1970-1972, in which he fabricated an authorized autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, convincing publisher McGraw-Hill to pay $765,000 for exclusive rights before Hughes’s personal denials exposed the hoax and led to Irving’s imprisonment.

Irving conceived the scheme based on Hughes’s legendary reclusiveness and aversion to publicity, calculating that the billionaire would refuse to emerge publicly to deny the project’s authenticity. Working with researcher Richard Suskind, Irving forged Hughes’s handwriting, created false interview transcripts, and developed elaborate backstories about secret meetings with the aviation pioneer at various international locations.

McGraw-Hill executives, eager to secure publishing rights to what they believed would be a bestselling expose of American business and politics, accepted Irving’s documentation and paid substantial advances without independent verification of Hughes’s cooperation. Irving’s wife Edith used false identification to deposit checks intended for Hughes into a Swiss bank account, completing the financial fraud.

The scheme unraveled when Hughes broke his public silence to conduct telephone press conferences denying any involvement with Irving or authorization for the biography project. Subsequent handwriting analysis confirmed Irving’s forgery of Hughes’s signatures, while bank records revealed the Swiss account deception.

Irving served seventeen months in federal prison for fraud, conspiracy, and forgery charges, while returning the advance money and legal fees. The case highlighted vulnerabilities in publishing industry verification procedures and established precedents for authentication requirements in celebrity biography contracts.