The mainstream view is that these accounts are specious and speculative since there are few, if any, independent confirmations to back them up. A few months later, perhaps compounded by inaccurate reports in "The New York Times" on November 17, 1909, it was incorrectly reported that the diamond's former owner, Selim Habib, had drowned in a shipwreck of the steamer "Seyne" near Singapore; in fact, it was a different person with the same name, not the owner of the diamond. There was speculation that jeweler Pierre Cartier further embroidered the lurid tales to intrigue Evalyn Walsh McLean into buying the Hope Diamond in 1911.