14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, one of the most touching auditions on America’s Got Talent aired as part of the show. It later turned out that stuttering war vet Timothy Poe was probably a fraud – and the American public is so upset that some people are actually sending him death threats.
Video of Poe’s audition is below: he claims he stutters because of a brain injury he got in Afghanistan. The footage even includes a photo of him in the field.
After the show, it emerged that the photo was of somebody else and, perhaps more tellingly, that Poe could provide no evidence for his claim that he was injured on a mission in Afghanistan.
The American public did not take the lie kindly, with some even going as far as to make sure Poe and his family knew they were on the black list, TMZ reports.
“Several family members have been getting death threats. We're told Poe's sister-in-law went to the store Thursday with her kids and someone came up to them and said, ‘We're going to kill you and the whole family’,” the celebrity e-zine notes.
“Several family members have received phone calls. We're told Poe's fiancée answered the phone (after Poe's number was leaked on social media) and the caller said, ‘You made American vets look bad and now you're going to suffer’,” the same report notes.
Other callers were more specific, with one vet in particular warning the family he would be coming over to the house so they’d better “watch out.”
Poe too has been having a very difficult time dealing with the amount of negative attention he brought onto himself.
“As for Poe himself, a family member says she fears he's suicidal. He hasn't left the house since the scandal broke, and he's been crying incessantly. One family member says Poe is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome,” TMZ writes.
As we also noted a couple of days ago, FreemantleMedia, the producers of AGT, claimed no responsibility in the fraud, saying Poe supplied them with the picture and the story, which they run without checking if they were legit.
They can’t possibly do a background check on every contestant, so they must take some things at face value, they said.