This article is about Alan Abel the prankster and not about Alan Abel of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Alan Abel (b. 1930) is an American prankster, hoaxter, writer, mockumentary filmmaker, and jazz percussionist famous for several hoaxes that became media circuses.

Education and early career
Following the Watergate scandal, Abel hired an actor to pose as Deep Throat for a press conference in New York City before 150 reporters. Literary agent Scott Meredith, offered $100,000 to buy the rights to his story. At the news conference the Deep Throat impostor quarreled with his purported wife, then fainted and was whisked away in a waiting ambulance.
Abel wrote, produced, and directed two mockumentaries – Is There Sex after Death? (1971) and The Faking of the President (1976).
In 1979 Abel staged his own death from a heart attack near the Sundance Ski Lodge. A fake funeral director collected his belongings and a woman posing as his widow notified the New York Times. The Times published an obituary January 2, 1980 (a rare example of a premature obituary). On January 3, 1980, Abel held a news conference to announce that the "reports of my demise have been grossly exaggerated".
Omar's School for Beggars was a fictional school for professional panhandlers. As Omar, Abel was invited to numerous television talk shows including the Tomorrow Show hosted by Tom Snyder, Morton Downey, Jr., Sally Jessy Raphael, Mike Douglas and Sonya Friedman, who was especially upset because Omar ate his lunch on camera. The hoax was a satirical commentary on the rise of unemployment and homelessness in America. Omar's TV appearances spanned the period from 1975 to 1988, even though he had been exposed several times.

1970s
During the early 1990s, Abel kept a full-size railroad caboose in his front yard in Westport, Connecticut, as a parody of the redneck stereotype of junked cars in the front yard.
In 1997 Abel launched a new venture, CGS Productions, to promote gift-wrapped pint jars of Jenny McCarthy's urine. (A parody of McCarthy's role in a shoe commercial where she appeared sitting on a toilet.) The name of the communications director for CGS Productions was Stoidi Puekaw – "Wake up idiots" backwards.
Abel once ran for Congress on a platform that included paying congressmen based on commission; selling ambassadorships to the highest bidder; installing a lie detector in the White House and truth serum in the Senate drinking fountain; requiring all doctors to publish their medical school grade point average in the telephone book after their names and removing Wednesday to establish a 4-day workweek.