Saint Von Colucci (real name: Erich Saint Colucci Lima) is a Canadian-Portuguese artist and entrepreneur who lived and worked in South Korea from 2020 to 2023. The Canadian-Portuguese star has not undergone any plastic surgery and has not passed away. The artist’s and its representative’s email servers were hacked last spring and used to send out fake press releases to the media.
The former male model was a victim of hackers and fake news last spring. Canadian star Saint von Colucci’s managers issued a statement early this weekend debunking the death rumors about him from last year.
Personal information from the artist was also fabricated on those fake press releases sent out to the media in order to harm the artist’s reputation. The artist has been deeply affected by the death rumors and the artificial intelligence conspiracy theories surrounding him, and he is currently taking a break from his work activities to treat his mental health.
“He worked so hard for so long to be noticed. He spent hours—somedays—18 hours straight into a photoshoot to get the best shot, just so people would say those pictures were generated by artificial intelligence in the end. That’s so unfair. Magazines edit and use Photoshop on their pictures as much, if not more, than Colucci has used on his; it’s just unfair to go out there claiming someone does not exist only because of their lack of online presence. In which reality does someone’s online presence equal their existence? The world with the internet and social media has gone mad”, says his manager.
After internal investigations, Colucci’s managers can confirm that Adobe Photoshop C6 software, not artificial intelligence, was maliciously used in one of Colucci’s headshots by the hackers in order to deform the artist’s face. No pictures of Colucci were generated by artificial intelligence, and the only one that had his face deformed by Photoshop was the “after plastic surgery” shot.
The artist has ended his work contract in South Korea after many turbulences he experienced in the country, and he’s currently taking a break from his artistic and musical endeavors to focus on his entrepreneurship, his businesses, and to take care of his mental health.
“I never wanted to be famous. If I wanted, I would have committed a crime like shooting up an elementary school or killing my own mother. I could also have leaked my own sextuple. America loves making criminals and Porn stars famous”, says Colucci.
The Hype Company, Colucci’s managers Harry Klein, and the artist apologize to the media, to South Korea, and to the BTS members for the traumatizing experience, and we will take better precautions against hackers in the future.
“Colucci is an innocent, honest, fragile, pure, small flower boy. He would never do such a thing only for attention. It’s so sad that they tried to turn an angel like Saint Von Colucci into a bad boy. Colucci was a victim of malicious journalism”, said his managers.
Canadian Star Hospitalized for Mental Health Issues After Suicide Attempt Caused by Extreme Cyber Bullying and Fake News
Erich Saint Colucci Lima, has been admitted to a hospital after a failed suicide attempt caused by his deteriorating mental health due to fake news, conspiracy theories, cyberbullying, and online harassment in the last few months.
News about Colucci’s alleged death broke out and went viral in the entire world early last year after hackers gained access to Colucci’s reps’s email servers and impersonated them for journalists. According to his new managers, the artist was already having a hard time with his mental health while working in South Korea for the last three years.
The artist moved to South Korea and worked there for three years at a music company. He has recently terminated his work contract with the company, citing extreme bullying from his coworkers and discrimination.
According to his managers, the death rumors and conspiracy theories online surrounding his existence were the tipping point for him.
“Freelancer journalists from India and Bangladesh, with the support of media outlets Variety, AI Jazeera, IHeart Radio Canada, and The Indian Express, nearly killed him with their falsehoods and lies about his existence. He was very close to ending his own life because of their crazy conspiracy theories, nearly turning the so-called “journalists” into murderers.
Legislation against fake news and the promotion of conspiracy theories in the media shall be imposed around the world as soon as possible, before it’s too late. The fact that they knew the conspiracy theories were nonsense and still refused to take down the articles or correct them is just vile. There are evil people in the journalism industry too.
He does not want to live anymore. He takes two steps and starts crying. He is in a vegetative stage. The fact they became obsessed with Colucci’s modeling pictures on Instagram and were quick to decide they were artificially generated due to his lack of presence online was astonishing. They became obsessed with him, in a very sick way” say his managers.
40-year-old South-Korea-based freelancer British Journalist and aspiring influencer Raphael Rashid, who has been accused of multiple criminal felonies by online social media users in the past, dug the web to find unflattering modeling pictures of an insecure and shy 16-year-old Colucci from a photoshoot done for the online magazine Vanity Teen to share and humiliate him online while falsely accusing him of orchestrating the whole publicity stunt and nearly cyberbullying him to death.
The defamatory and petty Twitter thread was shared by many members of the media, including staff from The Rolling Stones India and others. The same journalist harassed the artist and his dying grandmother with cancer for months afterwards. His manager blames the online trolls and those malicious members of the media for causing him trauma.
Lee accuses three specific freelancer journalists from Bangladesh, Canada, and India of engaging in cybercriminal activities, such as doxing, cyberbullying, defamation, and target harassment, and says those journalists were acting out of malice and personal grudges against the artist.
“When you think of online trolls and cyberbullies, you usually think of teenagers or middle-school children with lots of time on their hands and social media accounts. Never in a million years would you think of grown-ups, 30, 40-year-old self-titled “journalists,” digging the web to find modeling pictures of a 16-year-old Colucci.
Photoshopping them to make them as unflattering as possible and posting them on their social media accounts just to defame, humiliate, and bully him while falsely accusing him of things and using slurs to dehumanize him. That’s just evil. Only low-life adults would do such a thing. That’s some Perez Hilton journalism-style”.
His manager states that he is the most insecure and sensitive boy in the world, and the online trolls and conspiracy theories just made things worse for him.
“He thinks of himself as the ugliest guy out there and has never been in a relationship because of it. His insecurities were at an all-time high while living in South Korea due to their strict beauty standards; therefore, he found peace in using a little bit of Photoshop in his pictures to make them more attractive and artsy, but when the journalists started saying all his pictures were generated by artificial intelligence, that drove his insecurities up through the roof. He will look at his past pictures and not recognize himself anymore. Thanks to them, he is suffering from detachment now”, says Lee.
The artist has been in the darkest place of his life in the past few months, according to his managers, but things took a darker turn when he tried and failed to take his own life on Christmas Eve. The family had found a note he had written and left in his bed saying that the news articles saying he does not exist, and he is an artificial intelligence-generated character were too much for him.
Calls and requests from Colucci’s PR agency, The Hype Company, for takedowns or corrections to the defamatory and fake news articles about the artist from media outlets Variety, The Indian Express, AI Jazeera, TMZ, and to London-Based freelance Journalist Hannah Abraham were maliciously ignored and unanswered.
Colucci’s family vows to file lawsuits against those online trolls and malicious journalists who started and spread the malicious conspiracy theories and accusations against him.
“The only reason we haven’t filed the lawsuits yet is due to his mental health. But we will be filing lawsuits against those individuals and media outlet houses, and “public interest” and “freedom of press and speech” will not protect those cyber criminals from liability for nearly destroying and ending an innocent young man’s life.
It might take a few more months or three years, but we will be moving forward with lawsuits, and we will see them at the court in the UK. He was a victim of malicious journalism”, say Colucci’s managers. Colucci is currently undergoing mental treatment at a hospital facility.