Fake Montauk Shark Attack Destroys My Trust

It was a Father’s Day dream trip turned into a nightmare for me, and a prank gone too far.

The News Story That I Almost Published

Fred Scerponi, 25, of White Plains, was attacked by a shark off of the coast of Montauk while on a guided shark cage dive. According to Scerponi, everything was “going great,” until a smaller shark managed to squeeze through the doors and get ahold of his left foot.

“Sharks were swarming all around and it was awesome,” Scerponi said in an exclusive interview with Dan’s Papers. “I didn’t even see it coming, it was from behind.”

Upon seeing so much of his own blood in the water, Scerponi passed out, but was taken back to the boat by his father, Ted Scerponi, who had been in the cage with him. Scerponi added that it had been a Father’s Day gift, as his father had always wanted to go on one of these.

“We don’t have anything cool like this that you can do in Westchester,” Scerponi said. “I really wish I lived on Long Island, specifically the East End, so I could’ve done something like this with my dad earlier. It’s way better than Westchester, which is just upstate without nearly as much natural beauty as the Adirondacks.

“I don’t blame the charter,” Scerponi added. “But I would advise, moving forward, that there be more bars in the cage so the smaller sharks can’t get through.”

Scerponi came to consciousness on the boat, racing back to shore, as they had placed a tourniquet around his left foot. An ambulance was waiting back on the shore, and Scerponi was rushed to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for emergency surgery – but his left foot had to be amputated.

Despite the predicament, back in the operating room, Scerponi’s family was upbeat – largely because, they said, they were just happy he survived the attack.

“He’s going to be Peggy the pirate now,” Karen Scerponi, Fred’s mother, said with a relieved smile on her face.

The owners of the guided shark cage tour could not be reached for comment. However, Scerponi noted his intentions to sue them for however much a bionic foot would cost, plus a lifetime of emotional damage costs for the attack.

How Dan’s Papers Ties in to This Story

In case you weren’t aware, none of that actually happened. But that’s an authentic news story that I wrote and almost published (aside from a few changed names and details).

You see, when I was a teenager, I spent way too much time on the internet. I still do, but at least now I can do it under the guise of gathering knowledge that I can parlay into a paycheck as a journalist.

Naturally, looking up all the usual things a teenager with unlimited internet access would, I came across the infamous Dec. 9, 2013 Dan’s Papers story “Lions Released to Deal with Hamptons Deer Problems,” which detailed how a Hamptons billionaire would be releasing African lions on the East End to control the deer population.  I, 14 at the time, thought it was crazy. I grew up in Nassau County, where all of us ignorant, city slicking up islanders never heard of Dan’s Papers, and I worried if these lions could make it that far west. We Nassau folks will also see some trees that are not HOA-approved and assume we’re in the backcountry, so lions surviving out east sounded viable to me.

I couldn’t find this anywhere else, though – just on this mysterious local news website. I also came across stories of Old Man McGumbus, a veteran who lived in a bunker on Shelter Island.

“Gee,” I thought. “The East End is weird.”

It wasn’t until I came across another December 2013 article about another Hamptons billionaire heating the ocean near his house that I realized this was all a hoax.

“Oh, it’s like The Onion for the Hamptons,” I said.

Fast forward about nine years. One year after graduating from the University of Delaware, I started my career in journalism at a newspaper in Nassau County and had an encounter with an aggressively unfriendly bookstore owner who had somehow found my personal address and phone number. He used all of this information to try to get me to come to his store and buy an overpriced – but apparently rare – book. Curiosity, definitely not fear of how on Earth this guy found such information, led me to Google his name, and I came across the article in Dan’s Papers, from September of 2013, “The Owner of a Used Bookstore in Bellmore is Messing Up My Mind.”

“Dan’s Papers, I remember that! Wow, they were really on fire in 2013. And I guess I’ve never had an original experience.”

Continuing my quest of normal young man internet rabbitholes, I educated myself on the history of Dan’s Papers, how its founder Dan Rattiner became known as “the Hoaxer of the Hamptons,” with his hilarious columns and Hamptons Subway spoof. I learned from a New York Times profile that Dan “never lets truth get in the way of a good story,” and that the point of his spoofs was that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet or in newspapers.

Thanks for the advice, Dan. And thank you for piquing my interest in both cryptozoology and conspiracy theories.

But not all of Dan’s columns were hoaxes. Some were historical, and some, like the Bellmore bookstore guy, were cathartic. A few years after reading that column, I was lucky enough to land a job with Dan’s Papers as its managing editor. Reading all of Dan’s weekly columns – hoax, catharsis, history – is now part of my job.

Maybe I Am Just Gullible

Though the shark attack described here didn’t happen, “Fred Scerponi” is a real person. That’s just not his real name. He is my best friend from college, and when his Father’s Day Montauk shark dive got cancelled due to inclement weather, Fred thought it would be funny to ghost me over text for a few days, and then have his girlfriend text me late on a Monday night that the shark dive had gone horribly wrong – a shark got into the cage, got hold of his leg, and Fred had to be rushed to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital for emergency surgery. His left foot couldn’t be saved.

I reacted to this prank similarly to how I reacted to the Hamptons lions hoax 12 years ago. I told everyone I knew, said it was insane that no other news outlets had this story, and told my editors we’d have an exclusive about a nearly fatal Montauk shark attack. It wasn’t until after I asked for pictures of the gruesome injury, for the news story I would write, that Fred revealed it was a prank. I’ll let you imagine how it felt telling my family, who were worried for my friend, and my newsroom colleagues, who thought we had an incredible story, that it was all a joke.

So I’ll reiterate: thank you, Dan, for teaching me not to believe everything I read in newspapers or on the internet. However, I wish I had learned somewhere not to believe everything my known-jokester friends tell me either. There isn’t a website that teaches common sense.

Score one for Dan, whose columns had the exact intended effect on me. Score two for my friend, whose prank did the same thing.

As for me, the best I can do is write about it all, and hope I don’t fall for any of it again.

There you have it: hoax, history, and catharsis – a perfect Dan’s Papers column.

Michael Malaszczyk is the managing editor of Dan’s Papers.