On 14 January 2010 Creme announced that Maitreya had given his first interview on American television. Soon afterwards several people in the United States, working from Creme's predictions, concluded that the British-American economist and author Raj Patel was Maitreya. After newspaper articles spread this story around the world Creme responded that Raj Patel was not the coming World Teacher in an article in "The Guardian" under the headline "Raj Patel is Not Maitreya, But the World Teacher is Here — and Needed."