Officials of the TrekUnited campaign -- the group of people trying to fund a fifth season of "Star Trek: Enterprise" -- have said "legitimate" news sources were ready to corroborate their claims of negotiations with Paramount.

Well, if the Los Angeles Times isn't a "legitimate" news source, than what is?

Times reporter Scott Collins has been looking into the campaign run by Tim Brazeal in what was probably one of the worst-kept secrets on the Internet. What he turned up? Surprisingly, the same thing already reported at SciFi Wire, Airlock Alpha and TrekWeb -- news sources that have been regularly attacked the last two weeks for its questions regarding the campaign.

In the story, Brazeal -- whose criminal past as well as a 1998 bankruptcy were once again brought to the forefront -- seemed ready to throw in the towel.

"Game over," he told the Times. "We lost."

Collins apparently spent the last week or so doing his homework on the campaign. Andrew Beardall, the Maryland attorney representing the campaign, is apparently known in Maryland as "the Lobster Guy," and works part-time as a seafood vendor when not giving TrekUnited legal advice. Also investigated was self-proclaimed Canadian producer Al Vinci, who claimed on the TrekUnited message boards that he would release verifiable information to any major news outlet that asked for them. Unfortunately, he refused to do that with the L.A. Times, and they were no more able to verify Vinci's claims than SyFy and other online outlets.

Brazeal told Collins that it's time to move on.

"You reach a point where you have to say, 'Reality's reality,'" Brazeal said. "Paramout is just unwilling to bring (the show) back."

The campaign claims to have raised more than $3.1 million in pledges and donations. A multi-million dollar pledge was reportedly made by investors who also contributed a lot of money to the X-Prize contest. Last week, the campaign stopped accepting contributions and began to refund the more than $144,000 in actual cash donations, minus around 5 percent in administrative fees.

A lot of questions started to abound against the campaign when John Wentworth, vice president of marketing and media relations with Paramount, told SciFi Wire that the decision to cancel "Enterprise" was final, and discouraged fans from giving to fan campaigns. Another blow came when Paramount published a letter sent to Brazeal a month earlier, a letter that Brazeal never revealed to campaign members, that basically stated the same thing Wentworth told SciFi Wire.

The campaign answered the negative publicity a few days later with the introduction of the mysterious "Al Vinci," who claimed to be in a 1963 Sophia Loren movie as a child, and produce a pair of syndication television series in the 1980s as well as publish magazines that have printed "100 million copies." None of Vinci's claims have been verified by any media outlets.

Vinci at first claimed to have had talks stall two days after his introduction, but in the days following, said that Paramount would be issuing a statement confirming that negotiations would take place, and later even said that negotiations to bring back "Enterprise" are still ongoing. When Paramount didn't issue the release as promised, Vinci took to the campaign's message boards and threatened to out the Paramount executive he was in "negotiations" with.

A source told Airlock Alpha a day later that Vinci had indeed made contact with someone at Paramount -- television president David Stapf. However, Stapf and Vinci talked by accident, the source said, where Stapf was working late one night, and answered his own phone expecting someone else.

The source said that since then, Vinci has not had any contact with any executives at Paramount, and that there are no negotiations.

News of the Times article didn't hit the TrekUnited message boards as of this story's original publication.

"Star Trek: Enterprise" airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on UPN. It's final episode will air May 13.