Remember that person who once had a very believable and tragic survival story from 9/11? Well, she fooled us all and proved herself to be one of the greatest frauds!
She is Alicia Esteve Head, better known by her alias, Tania Head.
During the events of 9/11, it was learned that Tania wasn’t even inside the U.S.; she was attending lessons in her native city of Barcelona in Spain. She first traveled to the U.S. in 2003 (two years after 9/11) and went on to create an “online support group” for 9/11 survivors. Word started to spread, and her name reached one of the founders of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, Garry Bogacz. Both would go on to have numerous email correspondence and in the end, Tania agreed to merge her group with the network.
Tania’s story is sometimes considered tragic. She claimed to be in the South Tower on the 78th floor when United 175 crashed, making her one of the few survivors from the impact zone and above. She had a fiancé, later husband, who was killed in the adjacent North Tower. She claimed that a dying man passed his wedding ring to her so that she could pass it on to his to-be widowed wife and claimed that she was saved by Welles Crowther, who was being given extensive media attention for his heroic acts that day.
What made her different from other survivors, however, was that she was very vocal and open, which was considered strange because the traumatizing event should’ve left her unable to recount the entire experience in relative calm. People never questioned her validity and instead, people and survivors alike praised her for being brave, some survivors saying that her bravery gave them the confidence to slowly open up about their experiences.
Her growing fame eventually made her chosen to be president of the network, and she became a literal figurehead of all 9/11 survivors.
Her fame and reputation also meant that she had the opportunity to lead tours for the Tribute WTC Visitor Center for prominent figures like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former New York Governor George Pataki.
Her fraudulent claims were undoubtable, as said by her successor, Richard Zimbler.
There was no reason to doubt her story. She looked the part. She had a badly injured arm that appeared to have burn scars and her story was very, very realistic.
However, her lies started to unravel when people started to dig out more information about her. She claimed to have graduated from Harvard and Stanford but, both schools held no records of her. She claimed she had worked for Merrill Lynch but, not only did the company have no employment records of her, the company didn’t have any offices in the towers during the attacks!
This made Tania start to back out from the media and later on, the network agreed to vote her out when she was questioned about the veracity of her story. With her story exposed, she avoided the media and left New York City.
What made her the greatest fraud was that by seeking to gain more attention, she indirectly helped the survivors as well.
When she first entered the network, she was never paid for the activities within the network yet, she donated large sums of money to the network. Her admirable composure in recounting a traumatizing experience —albeit faked — gave the survivors some confidence to relive those events and share their stories with others.
By being a tour guide, she also increased public awareness about the survivors’ plight on that September morning, often saying before her tour: “I was there at the towers. I'm a survivor. I'm going to tell you about that.”
However, she was a fraud, and not only did she fool the greater public, she insulted the survivors who all had real, tragic stories from that event.
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