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Port Orford Meteorite Hoax - Part 4 of 6

PLOTKIN H. (1993) The Port Orford Meteorite Hoax
(Sky & Tel., September 1993, pp. 35-38):

Second, my research revealed that Evans had amassed a staggering debt
through mismanagement of his government contracts and land speculation
in Oregon. Overspending his budget three times in a row, Evans brought
his debt to $11,074. He was so crushed by this sum and the sense of
impending doom it gave him that he vowed he would "leave no stone
unturned" in his efforts to recoup this amount. He therefore did have a
compelling reason to lie - an urgent, desperate need for money.
Most startling of all, continued investigation led me to the shocking
but inescapable conclusion that Evans had acquired a small piece of a
very rare kind of meteorite and had fabricated a clever and elaborate
hoax. His scheme was to use it as a prop to get Congress to appropriate
the funds he needed to solve his financial problems.
Evans's financial plight was exacerbated by Congress's unwillingness to
make appropriations for past expenses. His plan to get around that
impasse centered on the meteorite. He hoped his story of its discovery
would prove so intriguing that Congress would make a modest
appropriation ($1,000 was suggested) to retrieve it. He then suggested
linking together this small sum with the much larger one necessary for
the publication of his long-overdue final report, the Geological Survey
of Oregon and Washington Territory. In this way, the publication
expenses - and with them all of his personal debts - could be sloughed
off as current rather than past expenses.

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