Imagine a world where Jennifer Lopez, our high-gloss patron saint of celebrity couple name mashups and slinky Versace numbers, personally wrote you a letter and sent it in the mail asking you to send her pictures of your nude body. Can you imagine that happening? No, you cannot? Not in any world? Even if you were a taut-bodied backup dancer, because even if Jennifer Lopez did want to see naked pictures of you, why would she ask in such a way when the Internet is a thing? Why would Jennifer Lopez have to solicit nudie shots from strangers? Jennifer Lopez doesn’t solicit anything, let alone junk shots from plebes. Jennifer Lopez probably only looks at porn that rich people know about. This story makes no sense, none at all.
Congratulations, you have determined the utter impossibility of a situation in which Jennifer Lopez sends letters to randoms asking for pictures of their funky bits. You are officially more sane than Rico Rodriguez, a Los Angeles man who is either delusional or just making a wild bid to make a quick buck.
Rodriguez filed a $10,000 lawsuit against Lopez, alleging the multitalented Selena star had sent him a series of letters demanding naked photos, which caused him so much psychological trauma that he had to seek expensive counseling. TMZ traced these letters back to a P.O. box in L.A. run by a 53-year-old woman who is emphatically not Jennifer Lopez.
TMZ got ahold of some of these letters and printed excerpts. Here’s a taste of the crazy:
“I just wanted to let you know that I do remember you and that I am interested in you. I have plans on leaving my husband. But I can’t say much right now so that’s it for now. Send me pictures of you both with clothes and without clothes.”
“This is Jennifer Lopez writing to you again and just to let you know that I got your packages, music, and demos. And just to let you know you need to send me pictures of you with and without clothes.”
“This is Jennifer Lopez and as you can tell its been a while since I last wrote and as you can see I have a new boyfriend which means your in for the long haul and you have to put up with the fact that I am f**king him and sucking his d**k.”
TMZ contacted the woman who runs the P.O. box, but it didn’t go well: “she nervously concocted a lame explanation about operating a Jennifer Lopez fan mail exchange … and hung up on us,” they wrote.
These letters are so blatantly fake and this lawsuit is so exquisitely crazy that I suspect that Betabeat is on to something with this theory: “it’s possible the letters are legit and Mr. Ruiz is being blackmailed by Jennifer Lopez after all. It’s even more possible that he and the owner of the P.O. box are in cahoots and they think they’ll succeed in extorting $10,000 from everyone’s favorite triple threat.”
People fall for hoaxes all the time, which is why there’s a term for lying about your identity on the Internet (catfishing). And even though this incident happened through the United States Postal Service and not the World Wide Web, it’s still a classic Catfish — or a poorly-thought-out scheme intended to snooker Jennifer Lopez out of her money. I’m not even sure which is crazier.