on 19 december 2018, "der spiegel" made public that relotius had admitted that he had "falsified his articles on a grand scale", inventing facts, persons and quotations in at least 14 of his stories in "der spiegel", an event now being referred to as "spiegelgate". the magazine uncovered the fraud after a co-author of one of relotius's articles about a pro-trump vigilante group in arizona conducting patrols along the mexico–united states border, the spanish-born "der spiegel" journalist juan moreno, became suspicious of the veracity of relotius's contributions and gathered evidence against him. about a year earlier, two residents of fergus falls, minnesota, michele anderson and jake krohn, suspected that relotius' portrayal of their hometown was inaccurate. for example, relotius lied about seeing a hand-painted welcome sign by the city limits that read: "mexicans keep out". they investigated on their own when efforts to contact "der spiegel" on twitter came to nothing. they published their findings in a blog post on medium, in which they detailed 11 of relotius' most egregious falsehoods. as anderson put it, "in 7,300 words he really only got our town’s population and average annual temperature correct".