Follow the Money: Tom Biscardi says "Hoax of the Century" Exposed a 60-Year Cash Cow Behind Bigfoot -- and Warns "Capturing Bigfoot" is Just More of the Same

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- For nearly 60 years, the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film has been sold to the public as the "holy grail" of cryptozoology. Tom Biscardi has a blunter description: a business model.

As a new wave of mainstream attention arrives — headlined by a Wall Street Journal feature on the documentary Capturing Bigfoot – Biscardi says audiences are watching the latest installment of a story he told, and says he was punished for telling, more than a decade ago.

"Everybody's suddenly shocked it was staged," says Tom Biscardi, CEO of Searching for Bigfoot. "I laid this out 14 years ago. It didn't take the world this long because the evidence was hard to find. It took this long because too many people were making money off of it."

The Money Train

The central charge of Hoax of the Century, in Biscardi's telling, was never simply that a man wore a suit. It was that an entire industry knew the footage was fake and cashed in anyway — then closed ranks to protect the payday.

Biscardi alleges that industry stretched well beyond the men on the film set to include researchers, academics at public institutions, media figures, and paid speakers who, he says, understood the footage was a hoax yet kept the legend alive because the legend paid — book deals, speaking fees, appearance money, licensing, and decades of merchandising.

"This has been a money train for six decades," Biscardi says. "You had academics at public institutions, people in the media, speakers selling tickets — and not one of them would say the words 'it's fake,' because the day the public believes it's fake is the day the checks stop."

They Turned on the Messenger

Biscardi says that when he released Hoax of the Century, the same network that profited from the mystery moved to shut him down. Biscardi, his children, and his grandchildren were threatened. He says he and his family received threats, and that he ultimately pulled the film from distribution — where it stayed, unavailable, for more than 14 years.

"I'm putting it back up now because the truth outlasts the intimidation — and because the same cycle is running all over again."

That cycle, he argues, is what Capturing Bigfoot represents: monetizing a mystery he says was solved long ago.

What's Actually in the Film

Hoax of the Century built its case on the people who were there:

• Bob Heironimus — the man who was inside the "Patty" suit.
• Philip Morris — the costume maker who sold the gorilla suit to Roger Patterson.
• Greg Long — author of The Making of Bigfoot, laying out the financial motives behind the 1967 footage.
• The forensic breakdown — how, in Biscardi's account, a staged production became a global icon and a nearly six-decade revenue stream.

Watch Hoax of the Century — streaming online at https://www.BigfootHoax.com

Media Contact: James Sinclair (330) 313-1525

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SOURCE Tom Biscardi