The Aztec crashed saucer hoax was the allegation that a flying saucer crashed in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by journalist Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell materials they claimed to be alien technology.