The founder of MeTooSTEM admitted that she just made up the Twitter account of a Native American professor who supposedly died of COVID-19. Dr. BethAnn McLaughlin, a neuroscientist and formerly a faculty member at Vanderbilt University, posted tweets on Friday that was meant to memorialize @Sciencing_Bi, who was supposedly a Hopi teaching at Arizona State University (ASU) who had succumbed to COVID-19.

What’s even more bizarre is that @Sciencing_Bi actually has some following on social media. People actually believe that she’s a real Native American scientist. It was only now that it was revealed that there was no such person when irregularities about the supposed facts about her death were checked.

McLaughlin’s account, together with the @Sciencing_Bi account, has been suspended by Twitter. McLaughlin issued a statement through her lawyer. “I take full responsibility for my involvement in creating the @sciencing_bi Twitter account,” her statement read. It seems that she does not really seem to be sorry over what she did. She’s just upset that she got caught. “My actions are inexcusable. I apologize without reservation to all the people I hurt,” she added to her statement.

The news that @Sciencing_Bi died because of the coronavirus was met with anger and sadness. Prominent scientists all over the country expressed their sadness over her passing. People were angry because @Sciencing_Bi was supposedly forced to return to work in April.

But it was also the news of @Sciencing_Bi’s death that led some people to realize that the photos posted on the account are just stock photos. A few began to check her, and soon they were checking on McLaughlin because apparently, she was the only one who has ever met the mysterious Native American scientist. That was when the story began to unravel. It seems that McLaughlin has been pretending she’s @Sciencing_Bi’s all along. No one would have checked on the truthfulness of the story if she didn’t try to pretend that her imaginary friend had died.

McLaughlin is obviously suffering from some form of mental illness for her to come up with such a complicated made-up story. It’s not known yet what her motives were for creating the whole tale. This is not the first time that she is facing scrutiny. She has faced accusations in the past of bullying the people who are working for her movement. She managed to generate sympathy for herself back then. But it’s unlikely that anyone would back her now.