Made famous in feb 2009, it was shown recently to be a bootleg and imposter, the bootleg being of earlier incidents in South Australia and Geelong, Victoria and the animal in the Museum said to be “Sam” is also an imposter, being a female, while the drinking Koala was a male that had been a pet three years earlier, not randomly encountered in the bushfires as alleged.
Sam the scam, Sam the koala is an impostor!

Media release – 13 February 2010

Sam the scam: Sam the Koala is an impostor!

On 12 February a paper was published that for the first time revealed that the stuffed “Sam the Koala”
sitting in the National Museum of Victoria is an impostor or fake.

Yes, the original water-drinking Koala is a different animal!

That was a male Koala, later renamed “Bob”, who had been captive as far back as 2006!

The paper by zoologist and author Raymond Hoser, went further and showed that the original video shot
showing a water-drinking Koala at Mirboo North in February 2009 was effectively a bootleg, a
“set-up” and not a random encounter as alleged until now.

The paper published in Australasian Journal of Herpetology (Issue 8 pp.1-64), went further and
detailed the fairly simple (and easily copied) forensics behind exposing one of the most successful frauds
in recent Australian history, including various other activities all successfully designed to raise large
amounts of money, running to the many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As it happens, most of the money raised went to worthwhile causes and a logical question to be asked is
why the author Raymond Hoser chose to expose the fraud at this late stage.

In response he said:

“Most of the money likely to be raised by “Sam the Koala” has already been raised, so I don’t think I’m
upsetting too many people. More importantly, the public interest is best served by telling the truth and
so it is better that it come out sooner rather than later …the fraud and the story is just too big to hide”.