Tommasso Debenedetti is a mid-40s teacher of literature in Rome.

He previously worked in the newspaper industry.

Debenedetti was first in the news in 2010 for publishing fake interviews with American writers John Grisham and Philip Roth attributing anti-Obama sentiments to them.

Grisham - a former attorney - looked into suing Debenedetti for the hoax.

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In the past several years, Debenedetti's favorite hoax has become announcing the death of famous American people on Twitter.

Debenedetti says that his motive is to "show that Twitter has become a news agency - the least reliable in the world."

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Debenedetti has also created false Facebook pages for writers Umberto Eco and Mario Vargas Llosa.

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Tommasso Debenedetti's 2016 hoax was announcing the death of Cormac McCarthy from a fake Twitter account purporting to be McCarthy's publisher Alfred A. Knopf.