Oops: Impostor scams Louisiana officials

Via Boing Boing, from an article of the same title on CNN.com about the Yes Men's latest prank:

A man who pulled a hoax on Louisiana officials and 1,000 contractors by presenting himself as a federal housing official said Monday he intended to focus attention on a lack of affordable housing. "We basically go around impersonating bad institutes or institutes doing very bad things," said the man, who identified himself as Andy Bichlbaum, a 42-year-old former college teacher of video and media arts who lives in New York and Paris. "That would be HUD. At this moment, they're doing some really bad things." Masquerading as Rene Oswin, an official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Bichlbaum followed Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to the lectern Monday morning at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner. In a speech to attendees of the Gulf Coast Reconstruction and Hurricane Preparedness Summit, he laid out grandiose plans for HUD to reverse course... In his speech, Bichlbaum said the department's mission was to ensure affordable housing is available for those who need it. "This year, in New Orleans, I'm ashamed to say we have failed," he said. To change that, HUD would reverse its plans to demolish 5,000 units "of perfectly good public housing," with housing in the city in tight supply, he said. Former occupants have been "begging to move back in," he said. "We're going to help them to do that." The government's practice had been to tear down public housing where it could, because such projects were thought to cause crime and unemployment, he said. But crime rates in the city are at a record high and there is no evidence that people in the projects are more likely to be unemployed, he said. The man added that it also would be essential to create conditions for prosperity. Toward that end, he said, Wal-Mart would withdraw its stores from near low-income housing and "help nurture local businesses to replace them."