ESPN Fires “Con Artist” Columnist Who Lied About Her Past, Ran Social Media Scams

Sarah Phillips didn’t start out here career as an ESPN columnist in the traditional sense because she never met in person with an ESPN recruiter and instead was found online after posting various comments on the message boards at gambling site Covers.com.

The sports network eventually gave Sarah her own online column but failed to verify that she was actually the person they thought her to be. It turns out Sarah Phillips was actually a 22-year-old West Coast university student who had been involved in various fraud and extortion schemes involving social media.

The network also discovered that the columnist was using someone else’s photographs to accompany her writings at Covers.com, once again hiding her past from her new employer.

It wasn’t until Deadspin ran a lengthy expose regarding the columnist and her real identity that ESPN realized its error and quickly fired its new employee.

The scam Phillips ran with several other accomplices involved approaching popular Facebook and Twitter pages and convincing their owners to take part in a lucrative new venture which ended up locking them out of their own sites.

After being fired by ESPN Sarah Phillips issued a statement in which she acknowledged “poor choices” she made in her past.

In a funny twist Sarah Phillips attempted to make it sound like it was her idea to be fired:

“I was able to evaluate everything and move away from sports media,” she wrote. “You live and learn. I’m just a fan now .”

Perhaps she should drop the entire college degree thing when she’s at it, after all this story and her past will surely follow her to any job interview she takes using her real name.  It’s funny to know that the viral nature of social media has probably screwed up plenty of future opportunities for this young lady given her history with social platforms.