Tania Head was everything that the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network needed as a public face for the cause: she survived the 9/11 attack, she was compassionate, hard-working and likeable. She also seemed scrupulously honest and generous – she never accepted any money for her campaigning work and donated considerable sums to the group. She also understood the power of public engagement, so she invited the filmmaker Angelo Guglielmo to make a documentary about the survivors connected to the charity. What happened next was unexpected and deeply troubling.

In 2007, the New York Times contacted the network, looking for an inspiring profile to lead on its sixth anniversary coverage, and they had no hesitation in recommending Head – she was the obvious choice. As the normal background checks were being made for the article, something didn’t stack up. Head had claimed to be working for Merrill Lynch when the attacks took place, but the company wasn’t based in the buildings at the time. She’d also claimed to be a graduate of both Stanford and Harvard, but neither institution had heard of her.

Was it just a case of an embellished CV, or were all of Head’s claims now suspect? As the NYT and Guglielmo dug further, it became astonishingly clear that Tania Head was not a survivor of 9/11. She’d made the whole thing up – including her story about the day of the attack, in which she attributed a pre-existing burn on her arm to an injury sustained during her escape.