Dawn of the Geeks

Tom Cruise was the victim of a hoax recently.

Cruise Hit with PR Prank

A few media outlets picked up a bogus press release posted on a British PR site on Sunday that claimed the shrink-hating, L. Ron Hubbard-loving star was set to give four lectures on “the modern science of mental health” at the Scientology Center in L.A. next month.

Among the dubious discourses allegedly planned for the lecture series: “How Psychiatry Invented Schizophrenia, and What Scientologists Can Do About It,” and “Diagnosis and Treatment of So-Called Clinical Depression with the Hubbard Super VII Quantum Electropsychometer.”

“It’s totally phony,” Bert Fields, Cruise’s always-busy lawyer, tells Radar Online. “Tom is not giving any lectures. I’m going to look into it, because, in my view, it’s forgery, wire fraud and apparently committed on an interstate basis. So if I can find out who did this, I certainly intend to pursue every remedy I can find.”

Fields, whose name is misspelled on the counterfeit release, says it should have been obvious from the listed lecture topics that it was all a big fat fake. “You know, ‘Out of the Closet and into the Auditing Room’ is not something Tom is going to put as the name of a lecture,” the fearsome legal eagle explains to the mag. “He’s not, in fact, giving any lectures. If he did, I would sell tickets.”