ESPN has fired a writer who went from being a poster on the bulletin board at gambling site Covers.com to be a star columnist on ESPN.com, with no control of her real identity. Sarah Phillips was fired shortly after the Dead Spin ran a lengthy expose questioning her identity and accused her of involvement in a fraud and extortion scheme involving social media. Phillips, who said she was a 22-year old West Coast university student and a hardcore gambler, has never met anyone on ESPN in person and used photographs of several people to accompany his writings on the cover.
Phillips and accomplices approached people with popular Facebook and Twitter pages, offered to make them part of a lucrative new venture, and then shut them out of their own sites after Dead Spin. After his firing by ESPN, which says it is reviewing its hiring practices, she released a series of tweets, saying she had made "bad choices" but did not admit wrongdoing, PC Magazine reports. "I was able to evaluate everything and move away from the sports media," she wrote. "You live and learn. I'm just a fan now."
Phillips and accomplices approached people with popular Facebook and Twitter pages, offered to make them part of a lucrative new venture, and then shut them out of their own sites after Dead Spin. After his firing by ESPN, which says it is reviewing its hiring practices, she released a series of tweets, saying she had made "bad choices" but did not admit wrongdoing, PC Magazine reports. "I was able to evaluate everything and move away from the sports media," she wrote. "You live and learn. I'm just a fan now."
