An article published last week in The Dried Tomato may contain inaccuracies and will be withdrawn, the culture and lifestyle magazine announced. The story was about Jeff Mortadella, manager of a hedge fund called Mortadella Investment Group LLC in Cementville, New Jersey. He was described as a self-made man and an enthusiastic patron of body painting arts.
Following the publication, there were numerous postings on the Net suggesting that no person or hedge fund by that name exists. Thousands of bloggers crisscrossed the Garden State in search of Mortadella and hundreds of new blogs sprung up to deal with related questions, such as whether this type of sausage contains any meat other than pork.
The blogger who writes WildBoar.com claims that Mortadella is actually a historical character from mediaeval Italy who was known for the excellent wild boar sausages he sold from the back of his donkey cart.
According to The Dried Tomato story, Jeff Mortadella is a New Jersey native who came from a poor family of waste disposal specialists but made a fortune trading cured meat futures and gave millions of dollars to local artists in the body painting, piercing and tattoo arts. “I want to help everyone get a great tattoo,” he is quoted as saying. “Humanity can do so much more with its skin.”
“We are still investigating this,” said The Dried Tomato editor Thomas Hogtried. “We’re very serious about any infringement of our standards. We will get to the bottom of the pot. I deeply regret any inconvenience to the many people who tried to find the body painted Angelina Jolie look-alikes mentioned in the article.”
Mr. Hogtried explained that the investigation is hampered by the author of the story being imaginary. “All our authors are imaginary as a matter of principle,” he said. “We have the best software to generate editorial content. It has great integrity, but sometimes there’s a bug and we get into trouble.”
