Researcher claims oldest person in recorded history was a fraud

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Jeanne Calment, who holds the record as the world’s oldest person, actually was not that old — and she wasn’t even Jeanne Calment, alleges a researcher who delved into the French woman’s long-accepted claim.

The woman who was reportedly 122 years and 164 days old when she died in 1997 was actually Jeanne Calment’s 99-year-old daughter, says Moscow mathematician Nicolai Zak, according to Agence France-Presse.

The alleged fraudulent claim was the result of the daughter’s attempt to avoid paying inheritance taxes, says Zak, who, with along with gerontologist Valeri Novosselov, studied biographies, interviews, photos and official archives.

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