Turner to Pay $2 Million for Causing Terror Scare in Boston
Feb. 5, 2007 — -- One of the two men charged in connection with the advertising campaign that turned into a terror scare was asked to keep quiet as the stunt sent the city of Boston into chaos, according to two fellow artists who provided ABC News with an e-mail from the man supporting their claim.
Two local artists, Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky, were arrested Wednesday night and charged with disorderly conduct and placing a hoax device for allegedly putting about 38 devices containing magnetic lights in the shape of a "mooninite" character from the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim show, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," around the city and surrounding area.
But friends and fellow artists Toshi Hoo and Travis Vautour said it's not Berdovsky and Stevens who should take the fall for this.
According to Hoo and Vautour, the New York-based guerilla marketing firm, Interference Inc., which was running the advertising campaign in Boston; New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; San Francisco; and Philadelphia, asked Berdovsky to keep his involvement quiet as the event was playing out.
"We received an e-mail in the early afternoon from Peter that asked the community that he's a part of to keep any information we had on the down low and that was instructed to him by whoever his boss was in this advertising campaign gone wrong," Vautour said. "I don't know if it was for security reasons or it was to buy them some time or to buy Peter some time."
In an e-mail obtained by ABC News sent from Berdovsky to Hoo at 1:26 p.m. Wednesday, the artist writes, "My boss at the Cartoon Network's ad agency just called -- she is asking that I pretty please keep everything on the dl [down low; quiet]." The e-mail, supplied by Hoo, contains a large swath of blacked-out text that he claims contained personal information he'd rather not share.
No one at Interference Inc. answered the phone or responded to requests for comment on the authenticity of the e-mail.
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