'Empire' actor Jussie Smollett joins a list of suspects claiming to be 'victims' in crimes debunked by police originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

While the Chicago police chief blasted him for allegedly fabricating a hate attack that needlessly caused his investigators countless hours of work to debunk, "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett isn't alone in going from 'victim' to villain in crimes deemed bogus by police.

In January, former Drake University student Kissie Ram pleaded guilty to lying about a racist note she claimed had been slipped under her dorm room door in Des Moines, Iowa.

In September 2017, a Muslim student, Yasmin Seweid, pleaded guilty to filing a false police report claiming drunken supporters of President Donald Trump harassed her on a New York City subway train on Dec. 1, 2016, and attempted to rip off her hijab, or traditional Muslim headdress. She confessed to making up the story because she missed her curfew.

PHOTO: Jussie Smollett is pictured in a police mugshot after being charged with making a false police report. (Chicago Police Dept.) More

Also in September 2017, five black cadet candidates at the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, found racial slurs scrawled on their doors. Following an investigation by school officials, one of the black cadets admitted to writing the slurs.

In 2012, Charlie Rogers, 33, a lesbian and former University of Nebraska women's basketball player, claimed three masked men broke into her Lincoln, Nebraska, home, tied her up, cut words into her skin and spray-painted slurs on her wall before setting her house on fire. Police investigators determined that she faked the crime and Rogers pleaded no contest to filing a false police report.

Not the first celebrity accused of a hoax

Unlike other crimes police have deemed hoaxes, Smollett's case quickly gained national attention due to his celebrity status.

Smollett claimed he was walking on a street near his Chicago apartment on Jan. 29 when two men attacked him and shouted homophobic and racist remarks while placing a noose around his neck. Following an exhaustive investigation, Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson said investigators determined Smollett made up the attack and paid two brothers to help him orchestrate it in hopes of winning a pay raise for his role on "Empire."

The actor was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for filing a false police report.

Smollett has denied the charges.

"Today we witnessed an organized law enforcement spectacle that has no place in the American legal system. The presumption of innocence, a bedrock in the search for justice, was trampled upon at the expense of Mr. Smollett and notably, on the eve of a Mayoral election," Smollett's attorneys Todd Pugh and Victor Henderson said in a statement following his arrest.

"Mr. Smollett is a young man of impeccable character and integrity who fiercely and solemnly maintains his innocence and feels betrayed by a system that apparently wants to skip due process and proceed directly to sentencing."

Olympic swimmer claimed he was robbed

Smollett is not the first celebrity to face charges of making up crimes out of whole cloth.

In 2016, Ryan Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist, claimed that he and three other members of the U.S. Olympic team were robbed at gunpoint at a gas station during the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

PHOTO: Swimmer Ryan Lochte prepares before competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 9, 2016. (Michael Sohn/AP, FILE) More

However, Brazilian police said that Lochte's story was a fabrication and that he and the other Olympians were not robbed. The police alleged that the swimmers vandalized a bathroom at the gas station after a night of partying and were confronted by armed security guards who requested money for the damage.

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