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Warning: The following news item is as fake as Sony's viral marketing scam and graffiti ads. The Federal Trade Commision stepped in and the real apology is here.

Sony issued the following apology yesterday after it was discovered that marketing executives at the Zipatoni advertising agency had constructed a regional chat room to solicit sex from minors:

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Zipatoni isn't a real 13-year-old girl and this chat room was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on Playstation products.

Sony's North American game division issued the apology yesterday after it was discovered that Zipatoni employees had been involved in soliciting sex from minors over the internet. The marketers were discovered when an anti-pedophile group called Perverted Justice tracked them to their regional St. Louis chat room called "all I want for xmas is some tlc."

Posing as a 13-year-old girl identified only as Courtney, Zipatoni marketers sent a series of messages to what they thought was an underage girl named Maureen. In fact, Maureen was an adult volunteer for Perverted Justice visiting the chat room. Maureen was asked whether she would like to participate in a sleepover, and when she answered, "Can I bring my mom?" she received the reply, "no, cuz this is a grllz only sleepover party for cool grlz not nrrrrrrrrrrrrrdz." Maureen was then asked the url of her myspace page and given directions to the Zipatoni building in St. Louis.

Sony has since taken down the chat room "all I want for xmas is some tlc." They have settled with Perverted Justice out of court, promising Zipatoni will not repeat the stunt anytime in the foreseeable future.

source: New York Times

Update: Square Haven issues apology

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out, Zipatoni didn't really solicit sex from 13-year-old girls and this news item was actually fabricated by Square Haven. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool news items, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on Square Enix. And Jeriaska has been fired.

--Square Haven

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