Since we reported the ongoing saga of Sgt. Copeland and his search on MySpace for his perp, we discovered that there has been a rise of hoax profiles on the site. Six of the approximately 16 sheriff or police departments profiles have already been found to be phony by USA Today. When asked to check into the problem, MySpace closed some that claimed they were New York, Virginia, New Jersey, Florida law enforcement departments.
 
Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace’s chief security officer, has promised to look into other suspicious-looking profile pages, since there are those who can be rather creative with their use of online deception. They are also training police on how to set up a MySpace page and tag it as an official profile. With over 160 million total profiles on the site, that’s a lot of cyber coffee and donuts to provide.