Conspiracy theorists got their jollies after a story about Tupac Shakur being alive and living in New Zealand made its way onto a Web site for PBS. And now reality is setting back in. Late Sunday night, the online hub for the public access station was hacked with an updated, fake news story about the late rapper on the NewsHour blog.

An anonymous hacking group by the name of LulzSec posted a note saying that members were “less than impressed” with a Frontline documentary on WikiLeaks. In protest, the group posted the false story about Tupac’s whereabouts, in addition to user IDs and passwords. The ‘Pac is alive and in New Zealand story was subsequently indexed by Google News and became a topic of discussion even hours after it was removed.

A NewsHour staffer spent hours trying to clear up the rumors on late Sunday and early Monday.

(Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage)