The Daily Show's special correspondent Jessica Williams was in Peoria, Illinois this week where she met with the man who started a parody Twitter account of his local mayor.
With just 55 fans, mostly belonging to his friends, Jon Daniel, pretended to be a fake mayor of his town, @peoriamayor, who regularly talked about his hoes, drugs and drinking. Real Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis flipped out, not a parody but in real life, and sent cops to Daniel's home and attempted to bring criminal charges against him.
Jessica Williams: How was anyone supposed to know the Mayor wasn't writing those tweets?
Jon Daniel: Because, I doubt the mayor would have [written] "I'm trill as f*ck."
Williams: I couldn't tell. The Mayor of Peoria couldn't tell.
Daniel: It was a parody Twitter account. It was labeled "Parody."
Williams: That dude is 56 years old. He's so old he probably can't even read the internet. You prey on the hopeless.
Daniel: Well I didn't believe he was ever going to see it. The account only had 55 followers.
While the account was marked as a parody, Ardis argued the citizens of his town wouldn't be able to tell the account was a joke. Awkward. Cops raided his home and took all of his electronics, but he was never charged with a crime, because, obviously, there wasn't one.
This week the ACLU helped Daniel finally settle their lawsuit against the city and Mayor Ardis to the tune of $125,000 in damages and attorney's fees.
Check out the hilarious interview with this so-called internet criminal:
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