For three years until his departure this January, Simon McLaren served as the director of communications for Blade, the urban aviation startup that went public earlier this year at a valuation of more than $800 million. His work in that time was largely what you'd expect of a company spokesperson — except for the fact that Simon McLaren doesn't actually exist.
After Insider sought to verify McLaren's identity, Blade CEO Rob Wiesenthal admitted in an interview that McLaren was a made-up persona invented by him and his colleagues, and that Wiesenthal masqueraded as McLaren in telephone conversations with news outlets. The ruse lasted for years, duped numerous journalists, and included a puzzling public drama around McLaren's purported departure from Blade. None of it was real.
McLaren has no substantial online presence outside of a Blade email address, a Twitter account created last December, and a Medium profile created last November. His personal website, created this January, was registered through a proxy, and he uses a 1966 photo of British racing driver Graham Hill across his accounts in place of a profile picture.