Walter O'Brien

A self-proclaimed "Genius Hacker", Walter O'Brien (LinkedIn) attracted the attention of television executives and members of the press with his outlandish claims of genius intellect, computer hacking skill, and other self-aggregandizing claims. After a CNET article titled "The origin of Scorpion: The real world story behind CBS's new drama" was published in September of 2014, Walter used the publicity to post a Reddit "AMA". On the Reddit site, Members of Reddit's more technical crowd began immediately poking holes in Walter's claims to which he was unable to respond. Even after he is exposed by many sources, O'Brien continues to make wild claims on the back of the publicity surge.

Among other specific Claims, Walter likes to use comparisons to other famous persons to include himself in select (presumably highly-skilled) groups. For instance he claims that his EB 1-1 VISA is "(also granted to Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill)" in an attempt to establish himself among Einstein and Churchill - but the EB 1-1 is granted to thousands of people annually.

Specific claims made by Walter O'Brien which were later found to be un-verifiable or outright false include:

Sources:

Rather than debunk everything here, O'Brien's polarizing claims have sparked dozens of people to dig into his past in an attempt to verify what he claims. To date, very little checks out.



Image source: zimbio.com


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