East Bay false prophet Harold Camping, who claims that the rapture will occur on 5/21, has an organization, Family Radio, that has bilked listeners out of $80 million in contributions between 2005 and 2009 with tales about Saturday's impending doom. Even his very own church employees don't buy Camping's judgement day gobbledygook. CNNMoney reports: more ›

In a failed effort to get "free food and other aid," four people were arrested on Tuesday after allegedly posing as San Bruno explosion victims. SF Chronicle reports: "The four submitted driver's license applications in which they falsely said that they lived in the burned-out area, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. They could have been eligible for free cell phones, gift cards from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and local stores such as Old Navy and Lunardi's Market." Ugh. more ›

SFPD PR is so cute, we're going to make this a regular thing. more ›

Have you been receiving daily calls from a fembot telling you about your auto warranty with a fembot? Say, like, three of them a day? Even though you don't own a vehicle? Want to make them stop? You should because it's a scam. According to SFA, here's how you do it: As soon as you hear, "Your Car Warranty Has Expired," dial the FTC at 1-877-382-4357, hit 1, then 2 to file a complaint. Ta-da! more ›

Next to promises of penile enlargements and bank accounts of Nubian royalty, the Webby Awards are one of the best scams on the interwebs these days. The Webby Awards, which are beyond a joke to insiders or anyone who has long since deleted their Prodigy account, were announced on Tuesday. Family Guy creator and meme thief Seth MacFarlane, former SNL star Jimmy Fallon, and (much to our surprise, concern) Mission Local were among the last night's top recipients. Because, of course, when you think of last year's leading voices on the online internet world wide web, you think of MacFarlane and Fallon. more ›

Okay, we're not exactly sure how this works, but it's...bizarre. Seems that a trio of scammers are preying upon the elderly Chinese American community in SF (no, not Ed Jew). What's interesting is their technique. more ›

Update: Oh damn! The video's not working. It's a compilation of all the various calls we've gotten. We'll try re-uploading it when we get home from work. more ›

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and several smiles as well as lots of cash were raised by some plucky urban ironing. London is apparently full of lies and whales: one of these things is true. We leave that up to you to figure out. more ›

-- The very attractive Yusuf Bey IV, Your Black Muslim Bakery chief and sudden media darling, now faces real-estate scam charges. Gulp again, dude. [Chron] more ›

Here's todays sports news more ›

Here's todays stories from SFist more ›

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: Those of you longing for less Newsom news, the Weekly is your place! It's an entirely Ruby Tourk-free issue (except for the first two paragraphs of Matt Smith, at which point he then changes the subject entirely to talk some more about the city golf courses). More letters about Jade-Blue Eclipse. Has Nancy Pelosi had a facelift? People upset about the increase in fees for a state medical marijuana card. Aw, is it not enough that you can buy the pot, but you gotta be cheap about it too? (yes, yes, we know, medical need -- but still!) Cover article: We don't really get it, but it's something about the son of a cook whose name we don't recognize (Narsai David?) who got arrested on a pay-phone scam involving toll-free numbers? Hm. Yay Indiefest! Yay Fauxnique! Yay sex tours at the zoo! Meredith goes to the steak place in the mall (with a friend named Ruby -- but we don't think it's Ruby Tourk) and clashes with a server. SFist Ced doesn't get to enjoy the tension, though, because he's refusing to read the review on principle. An interview with a DJ who's done a totally awesome remix of E-40's "Tell Me When To Go." And Savage Love lectures a diaper fetishist (not the astronaut lady). more ›

As fall settles in and another calendar page gets turned, thoughts turn from bbq's and vacations to holidays and the realization that '06 is coming to an end. With all that going on, with change in the air, we wonder what is it that made that makes the -ists ponder? more ›

If it weren't for our life as an -ist, we're not sure we'd ever leave our apartment. Fortunately, to fully -ist, one must seek out the new, the fresh, and the unknown. Brand new, or just new to us, that's what we're all about this week. more ›

You'd think that after our ungrateful sniping about the way we were (without our knowledge) nominated for a "Pubby" award, that the San Francisco Bay Area Publicity Club would blacklist us from all future events. more ›

Thanks to the voting efforts of our wonderful readers, SFist's Editors will be going to the San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay party at Club Six this Wednesday. more ›

Reader Nick quite intelligently sent his feedback to Muni, and even more cleverly sent his experiences to us. Here's hoping he gets a response from Muni on his concerns -- Nick, keep us posted! more ›

We must admit we're kind of fascinated, in the bad way, by people who steal babies and pretend the babies are theirs. It intrigues the same part of our brain that reads stories about cat hoarders. This probably says something very bad about us, doesn't it? (On the bright side, none of our friends will ever ask us to baby-or cat-sit for them ever again.) more ›

So are the people behind the J.T. Leroy hoax all irritated that James Frey has gotten the bulk of the publicity -- and subsequent sales boost -- in the "Authors who misrepresent themselves to the public" press beat? Is that why Geoffrey Knoop is now giving interviews in which he admits that (former) partner Laura Albert was the one who created J.T. Leroy, wrote under that name, and duped all sorts of literati? more ›

Hey, what's with the new cool SFist banner and block ads you can see all over the -ist network? Well, after an intense, breakneck reader contest, we had our winner, with Rachael Sbuttoni's Muni-themed ads winning by a landslide. Aren't they cool? more ›

Bay Area crime roundup more ›