Harvard historian Karen L. King ignited a controversy at a 2012 conference in Rome when she presented a papyrus fragment which appeared to refer to Jesus’ Wife.   An article in the July/August 2016 Atlantic details a subsequent investigation into the fragment’s provenance:

“A hotly contested, supposedly ancient manuscript suggests Christ was married. But believing its origin story—a real-life Da Vinci Code, involving a Harvard professor, a onetime Florida pornographer, and an escape from East Germany—requires a big leap of faith.”  Source: Did Jesus Have a Wife? – The Atlantic

The article is quite long but well worth reading as it lays out the anatomy of what appears to be an elaborate fraud.

The most effective deceptions are indirect. The perpetrator presents a fragmentary context buttressed primarily by misdirection and a few strategic lies.  The core falsehood is misstated, as if the con artists doesn’t actually believe it, and is trusting the mark to help sort the matter out.  The mark is then allowed to fill the very substantial blanks with whatever facts and opinions may happen to fit.

And even academic experts can be sucked in.