Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton said Wednesday he will launch an internal investigation into the authenticity of documents used in a story last week asserting that the newspaper had uncovered new evidence implicating associates of rap impresario Sean “Diddy” Combs in the bloody 1994 shooting of hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur.
Stanton ordered the review after the editor of the celebrity-centric website told the newspaper that he had reason to doubt the Times’ account and in particular the FBI records that were supposed to buttress the story.
The website Wednesday posted a story saying the records purportedly contain statements by an unidentified informant to an FBI agent, which the newspaper posted on its website, that appeared to be forgeries for multiple reasons, including the fact that they appeared to be written on a typewriter, rather than a computer, and included blacked-out sections not typically found in such documents.
Although the Times has not identified the source of the purported FBI reports, The Smoking Gun story asserts that they were created by convicted con man James Sabatino, who the website contends was a starry-eyed music fan with a long rap sheet and a history of exaggerating his place in the rap music world.
