What's Your Alibi?

By Rachelle Bowden in Miscellaneous on Feb 27, 2007 8:22PM

Chicago-based AlibiNetwork is your backstory for hire. For a fee, they will set up a charade of limitless scale. One client had a group of actors show up at his house for a sham fishing trip. While the actors caught fish for evidence of a legitimate trip, the client was able to further an affair. Wow.

Mary, a married woman from Chicago, was able to have a rendezvous in Las Vegas with her man on the side thanks to AlibiNetwork. For $350, she had fake travel documents that pointed to a made-up sightseeing trip in LA. A fake hotel phone number was routed to her cell phone. Another client, Brian, uses AlibiNetwork to hide his gambling addiction by claiming to attend non-existent conferences. His real destination is the tables in Vegas.

More innocent uses might include a "rescue call" to escape a bad date or a boring meeting. However, Chicagoist is a master of picking up a pretend phone call to escape an endless meeting. Shelling out $75 to get a call from an operator seems a little over the top.

AlibiNetwork is quick to shrug off any responsibility. "We are just a service," says Michael DeMarco, a company spokesman. "It's not the technology that's at fault — it's
the user and the motivations." OK, but aren't you are a service designed for the express purpose of deception? By AlibiNetwork's own estimates, half their clients use the company to engage in an affair. The rest can't be up to much good. Is Chicagoist old-fashioned, or rightfully indignant?

Thanks Joe!