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It has now been confirmed that a man arrested for shoplifting razors from a Beverly Hills drugstore last month, initially reported as former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, is an impostor. Jason Michael Hurley had fooled police into thinking he was the troubled singer for nearly a month.
After celebrity gossip outlet TMZ ran a story about Weiland’s arrest, alleging that he’d been arrested for shoplifting from a Rite-Aid chemist in Beverly Hills, was subsequently found to be in possession of meth, and was unable to pay the $95,000 bond, the singer took to his Facebook page to respond.
In a video, Weiland called TMZ‘s report a work of “fiction” and insisted that, far from being in jail, he has spent the past month “touring, writing and recording my new album” in a Los Angeles studio. Weiland urged fans to ignore the report and told TMZ, “You’ll be hearing from my attorneys.”
Now TMZ reports that after authorities believed that they had arrested the exiled Stone Temple Pilots singer, they put out a press release titled Celebrity Arrest, bragging about the Weiland arrest. After the singer released his video, however, a confused TMZ quickly got in touch with the cops.
Police claimed that they had performed a “physical check” and that Weiland was “definitely” in their custody. However, they later issued a mea culpa after an FBI fingerprint check revealed that the man believed to be Weiland for nearly a month is a doppelgänger named Jason Michael Hurley.
The 44-year-old Hurley is not only two years younger than the former Velvet Revolver frontman, but has red hair, looking more like Weiland, who now has black hair, in Stone Temple Pilots’ 1993 video for Plush. TMZ have since amended their report, adding the title, Massive Cop Screw Up.
The real Weiland’s problems with drugs and alcohol have been well-documented and were a contributing factor to his exile from Stone Temple Pilots in 2013. When asked about the firing last year, the group’s bassist, Robert DeLeo, said the band “really didn’t have any other choice.”
Watch: Stone Temple Pilots – Plush
