Last week, yours truly penned a little article about a poor Polish chap who had all of his teeth surgically removed by his vengeful ex-girlfriend. The story proved to be quite popular, capturing the imagination of people all over the world who have often dreamed of performing unspeakable acts upon their ex-boyfriends and/or ex-girlfriends. Although the story was kind of sad, the ridiculous nature of the scenario left plenty of room for a chuckle or two at the guy’s expense.

Turns out, the whole bloody affair was nothing more than a hoax.

If you missed the piece, let’s play catch-up: A man, who recently parted ways with his dentist girlfriend, decided to pay the lass a visit so she could address his tooth ache. Instead of addressing the problem, the woman doped him up, yanked every single one of his teeth, and sent him on his way. To make matters worse, his current girlfriend, horrified by his embarrassingly empty mouth, decided to leave him. It was sad and funny at the same time.

Erin Tennant at MSNBC decided to look a bit deeper into the case, and what she found was quite revealing. Neither the Polish police department nor Poland’s Chamber of Physicians and Dentists are investigating such a case, indicating that nothing of the sort ever took place.

After some digging around, the tale was finally traced back to the online edition of Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. However, writer Simon Tomlinson, whose byline appears on the article, claims that he doesn’t know where the story came from. Odd, that.

“I’ve drawn a bit of a blank,” he stated in an email. “The (Daily) Mail Foreign Service, which did the piece for the paper, is really just an umbrella term for copy put together from agencies. My news desk isn’t sure where exactly it came from.”

That’s pretty peculiar. Given that the piece is only a week old, you’d think it would be fresh in his mind. Is Tomlinson simply trying to ignore the problem until it goes away? Possibly. Then again, this whole situation has been pretty bizarre, so it’s anybody’s guess if he’s telling the truth or not.

I, for one, am a little disappointed that the story is a hoax. It’s not that I enjoy having a laugh or two at the expense of others — well, that’s not entirely true — but the idea of someone getting a little revenge on the person who wronged them is kind of amusing. In a sick and twisted way, of course. It’s the sort of story we can share with others so everyone and their grandmother can enjoy the article’s inherent outrageousness. If nothing else, it’s reinforces the old adage that we shouldn’t always believe what we read, especially on the Internet.