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been interviewed in 2001, during the immediate aftermath.

their suspicions mounted when they tried to speak to tania and she repeatedly dodged interviews, then started blocking their calls. She warned other survivors not to talk to the reporters either.

Panicked by the reporters, she went to a lawyer to prepare a statement — but as she did so, she admitted several inconsistencies in her story.

She conceded she had never worked for Merrill Lynch. She was not a rising star at the bank — she had simply visited the offices to apply for an internship, by bad luck on the very day of the attacks.

Dave was not her fiancé. they had never owned a dog called Elvis. In fact, they had been dating only for a few weeks.

rumours soon spread through the survivors’ group: tania head’s story couldn’t be trusted. Parts were exaggerated, embellished or simply not true.

When the New York times published its exposé a week later, even the lawyer’s statement fell apart.

tania’s real name, the paper revealed, was Alicia Esteve head. On September 11, 2001, she was not in the south tower of the WtC. She was not even in New York, or the u.S.

She was in Barcelona, a pupil at a business college.

Merrill Lynch had no record of her, not even as an applicant for an internship.

Dave’s family had never heard of her. And he had never met her.

Everything she wove into her story was gleaned from newspaper and magazine reports, including Dave’s identity.

In particular, she stole many facts from an interview in the New York times with Ling Young, who worked in the New York tax department on the 86th floor of the south

Why she perpetrated the most offensive fraud, no one knew

tower, and who was in the sky lobby when the second plane struck.

Ling was guided to safety through the rubble and flames by Welles Crowther, the man in the red bandana and a true hero of the attacks. Of all the people betrayed by tania, none were more hurt than the Crowther family.

Alicia head was the fifth child and only daughter of a wealthy Spanish family. the scars on her arm came from a car accident in her teens, on the Spanish coast with friends.

An attention-seeker since childhood, she used to tell people in Barcelona that the car was a Ferrari and the driver was her fiancé — the love of her life. More lies.

And then she disappeared after the New York times published her photograph and story under the headline: ‘In a 9/11 Survival tale, the Pieces Just Don’t Fit’.

She didn’t make any attempt to brazen it out. She made no excuses. She simply vanished.

Further investigation suggested she had committed no crime. tania didn’t take funds from the group — in fact, she was a leading donor.

Why she told such colossal lies, perpetrating the most offensive fraud imaginable, no one knew — just as no one knew what happened to Alicia head next.

One rumour said she returned to Spain, where she was sacked from at least one job after her lies in America caught up with her. Another said she killed herself in 2008, unable to live with the shame of what she had done.

Establishing the truth of this, like so much else with Alicia/tania, was difficult... not least because she was estranged from her family. Far from coming to her hospital bedside, her parents were no longer in touch with her.

her current whereabouts are unknown. But film-maker Angelo Guglielmo believes he saw her once. She was in New York, coming out of a hotel. And Angelo confronted her.

‘how dare you?’ he shouted. ‘Don’t you have any feelings for the people you’ve hurt?’

Alicia head threatened to call the police. then she disappeared into the crowd.