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In a small community north of Toronto, inside a modest white house surrounded by lush farmland, lives a 48-year-old man unintentionally caught up in the crack-video allegations that have engulfed Mayor Rob Ford’s office for weeks.

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Meet Neil, better known as “Slurpy, the Rob Ford lookalike” — although at best, he bears a passing resemblance to Toronto’s chief magistrate, who has been embroiled in controversy since two media outlets said they viewed a cellphone video of the mayor smoking a crack pipe.

As reported last month by the National Post, a group of Toronto men responded by hatching a bizarre scheme to film and release a fraudulent crack video starring “Slurpy,” who briefly became a Twitter meme and the talk of city hall. And so it was that Neil, who eschewed the phoney video plan from Day One, reluctantly found himself entangled in the spiralling Ford saga.

“I tried to steer away from this right from the beginning. I don’t even look like the guy,” Neil tells the Post Wednesday in an exclusive interview, which he says will mark his first and last public comments on the topic. “I don’t want to be embroiled in this and that’s it. I said, ‘This is a scam and you’re going to go down for this. You’re going to end up in jail.'”