Lonely Planet suffered a substantial blow to their credibility last week after one of their former writers admitted that he plagiarized, invented sections of guidebooks, wrote about places he'd never been, and oh....the clencher...dealt drugs to supplement his crappy income from Lonely Planet. Yikes.

Thomas Kohnstamm is the perpetrator, and has coincidentally written a book about his adventures in the Guidebook business, entitled "Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?" It is being released next week...nice promotional push, aye?

The 32-year old has worked on a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including the Guidebook for Columbia...where he's never actually been. Kohnstamm posets that many writers can't afford to  visit all the places they are assigned to write about. "They didn't pay me enough," he was quoted  in the Daily Telegraph. "I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern in the Colombian Consulate."

Lonely Planet pooped their pants after reading about this lovely interview - and then swiftly went on the defense. An email from the company summed it up:

"If we find that the content has been compromised, we'll take urgent steps to fix it. Once we've got things right for travelers as quickly as we can, we'll look at what we do and how we do it to ensure as best we can that this type of thing never happens again."

All the more reason to get a second opinion when planning travel.....