This image was lost some time after publication.

As we read People's story about how CSI: New York crew members stumbled upon an actual corpse at a downtown L.A. location shoot, we secretly feared that a mysterious dead body turning up near the set of a show about uncovering the stories behind mysterious dead bodies might prove a little too elegant a coincidence to be true. A Defamer operative is already claiming that "discovery" is nothing but a cynical PR stunt meant to take advantage of the too-trusting public's love of a good, accidentally-discovered-mummified-corpse story:

The CSI body found was complete and ABSOLUTE bullshit...a PR stunt. They had actually called up one of my best friends who currently is in charge of developing the site for Club View, the most expensive condominium complex in the US, located in Beverly Hills. They said they wanted to shoot on the site and when asked what it was they would be shooting, they said they wanted to plant a dead body and "discover" it. Because the fear was that the location would receive a bad rap and potentially dissuade investors, they said absolutely not and sent CSI on their way. The price tag for such an "adventure"? They were only going to pay $2000 to use the site.

It's not too surprising that the luxury condo developers passed on a role in the CSI stunt, as a well-publicized corpse discovery at the site would have made the property only slightly more desirable to investors than its official zoning as a haunted Indian burial ground. We're even more disappointed that Jerry Bruckheimer allegedly offered only $2000 to buy their complicity, an embarrassingly piddling sum that the production probably just pocketed when they moved the fraud downtown, knowing that they could send a PA to hunt around a Skid Row shantytown for a body to ditch in an unoccupied apartment without a kickback.

Previously: Actual Dead Body Found On 'CSI: New York' Set [Defamer]