I wonder what tipped them off
Another hapless denizen of bizarro-world unmasked, tarred, and feathered by the relentless guardians of Wikipedia. Oh, why must we insist on the facts when the fiction is so much more entertaining? - Andy Carvin has the story.
A young man identifying himself as Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, 5th Duke of Cleveland, visited Stillwater Area High School in Minnesota three times trying to enroll as a transfer student. He had a “spot on” English accent and insisted on being called “your grace.” Students at the school had their doubts, so they began researching him on the Internet…student research exposed Gardner to be their so-called Duke of Cleveland; he also happened to be a 22-year-old registered sex offender.
All right, so it’s definitely for the best that the erstwhile 5th Duke of Cleveland was discovered in his lie, as he could have endangered the lives of high schoolers with his sexual predation. But think about it - with our pasts and personal histories becoming increasingly transparent, does anyone really have a chance to retire with dignity by becoming a harmless fringe-dwelling eccentric, without some plodding fact-checker pointing out to everyone that you are really just a former stock manager for Safeway, and not a terribly good one? I guess my life plan of moving to the backwoods of Kentucky, changing my name to Costanza, Duchess of Umbria, and collecting dried-out deer droppings in various-sized velvet-lined boxes and breathlessly showing them off to visitors as the “family jewels” will have to be modified a bit.