Politician Accused Of Using Photograph To Fake Attendance In Zoom Meeting

A politician in Mexico has been accused of using a photo of herself to fake attendance at a Zoom meeting. You can watch the alleged ruse here:

Valentina Batres Guadarrama was attending (at least initially) a remote meeting of the Congress of Mexico City on Friday. But seemingly not intent on sticking around, the legislator of the National Regeneration Movement could be seen using a photograph of herself as a virtual background before appearing to exit the call.

If this was a cover-up, then it was not a great plan on paper, and it was executed very poorly too. Best case scenario, surely you have to get the photo set up in advance and then just hope nobody asks you anything or notices that you don't blink. But Guadarrama could clearly be seen leaving her seat, with her arm intermittently jutting into the foreground.

To make matters worse for her, the Zoom meeting was recorded and Jorge Gavino, deputy of the local Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), uploaded the damning footage on Twitter, along with the caption: "I was thinking you were paying a lot of attention to my speech, until I realised that your attentive look was a photograph."

Newsflash

As you might expect, the footage became the subject of widespread mockery, with Gavino's video viewed more than 54,000 times.

Guadarrama has since responded to the condemnation, claiming she accidentally set the photograph as her background and attempted to get rid of it.

In a statement shared on Twitter, she said: "My lack of knowledge in handling digital tools made me make a mistake. I put a wallpaper that showed my frozen image. I stopped for a second to request technical help at home.

"It is worth mentioning that each session requires our fingerprints to verify the presence of each of the deputies present.

"If you see the full video of the session, you can see that during the session I appear moving and making various gestures and movements."

So I suppose we'll just have to form our own judgements about what exactly happened. I for one find it more plausible that this was a case of ineptness in 'handing digital tools', rather than a shambolic truancy attempt. After all, politicians are notoriously honest, so I'll take her word for it.

Topics: World News, Fail, Mexico, Politics

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey