Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Whoops…Phillips’ Story on Pac and Diddy Isn’t True?

Chuck Phillips’ investigative report in the LA Times last week on Diddy, Pac, and Biggie is now being investigated internally, after The Smoking Gun website called the new information Phillips used for his story a hoax.

Turns out Phillips’ main source all along was James Sabatino, who the Smoking Gun pretty much calls the ultimate Forrest Gump wannabe of hip-hop disasters:

The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.”

Um, whoa.

No word on how the media will deal with the new rumor alleging the corpses of Biggie and Tupac both had red ribbons tied on their right wrists when they were found dead.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 12:53 pm | 3 Comments

3 Responses to “Whoops…Phillips’ Story on Pac and Diddy Isn’t True?”

Jay Smooth says:

March 26, 2008 at 2:38 pm

haha I was just coming here to ask about this, cuz in your previous post you mentioned that “The stories of Lil Shawn, his manager Jimmy Henchman, and mob-connected industry insiders James Sabatino and Haitian Jack have been circulating for years”
but I had never heard of Sabatino before Philip’s piece.. had you specifically heard sabatino’s name in the mix before the times piece broke?
easportski says:

March 26, 2008 at 4:35 pm

told you it was a red herring.

whoa is right.

how about that TSG piece though? somebody give them a Pulitzer. best quote:

“It is not Bureau of Prisons policy to allow cross-country furloughs. Even to attend the Soul Train Music Awards.”
Jody Macgregor says:

March 28, 2008 at 2:13 am

This is interesting. It’s from an interview with Chuck Phillips at hiphopdx on March 17.
(http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/features/id.1070/title.chuck-philips-all-eyez-on-me)

DX: I guess I’m just genuinely a little suspicious of this informant’s statements regarding Sabatino.
CP: The main thing I’m trying to say is I didn’t base my story on that informant. I based this story on my own reporting. We came up on those documents later after I was pretty much sure of what happened. The newspaper always likes [to have] a document [to substantiate claims in a story]. I don’t particularly believe in F.B.I. papers or L.A.P.D. reports. They’re often lies. I’ve got a guy that I’m working a story on that’s been in prison for 13 years for something he didn’t do, but if you were to read the reports you would believe he did everything. So I mean, legally something like that is very good to have. And it confirms a lot of the stuff that’s in my story, that document. But I had reported my own story based on the people I believe were in involved.

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