In case you were wondering about that classified ad in Tuesday's newspaper — the one that said someone had found Robert Plant's cashmere sweater and vintage Aston Martin — it was a prank.

Well ahead of April Fool's Day, a caller was able to place a free ad in The New Mexican classified section's "found" category that directed interested parties to call Rory and listed a California phone number.

Rory turned out to be a 41-year-old Los Angeles artist who goes by Rory Emerald, but whose birth name is Julian Lee Hobbs. The ad was a ruse — the latest in a series of such ads he has placed in newspapers around the country — but gave Emerald's real phone number. By early afternoon Tuesday, he said he had received about 50 calls from people inquiring about the items.

Emerald, who is a painter, says he is also a performance artist of sorts.

He adores Robert Plant, the British rock singer/songwriter who gained fame with the group Led Zepplin. But it wasn't the first false ad Emerald had invented with a rock-and-roll theme.

An ad published in Aspen, Colo., claimed someone had found Billy Idol's motorcycle, record collection and leather jacket. In Colorado Springs, Emerald placed an ad that said he had found Elton John's psychedelic platform boots and his kaleidoscope collection. Emerald has also claimed to have found the original bottle from I Dream of Jeannie and the car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Emerald hopes his ads have a certain "lilting grace." They are "friendly pranks," he said, meant to make people laugh and to give them a break from the serious content of the newspaper.

"These 'found' ads really capture people's attention," he said. "They talk about them. They cut them out. They put them up in their offices. It's a lot of fun. It's sort of like having a collective link with everyone."

Emerald said he began placing fake classifieds in 2005 after becoming fed up with the media frenzy surrounding the Michael Jackson trial. Emerald placed an ad in a Santa Barbara, Calif., paper that said he had found a prosthetic nose near Neverland Ranch. Since then, he has placed ads in nearly 100 papers. Each ad is different, and he never places one in the same newspaper twice, Emerald said.

In 1993, Emerald went to jail for impersonating actress Mia Farrow's personal shopper on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and trying to take more than $10,000 worth of clothing, according to the Fresno Bee, which ran a story about him after he pulled off a hoax on readers of that paper. The ad said Judy Garland's original ruby slippers and "dowdy" farm dress from The Wizard of Oz had been located.

Classified employees at The New Mexican said the ad seemed strange at first, but an ad-taker said the policy is not to discriminate. The ad-taker said the caller sounded like a woman. Emerald would not explain the "tactics" he uses to place the ads, but says it can be difficult to convince newspaper personnel to run the free items.

"If they think for one minute that it's not true, it won't get in," Emerald said.

Contact Natalie Storey at 986-3026 or nstorey@sfnewmexican.com.