ATLANTA , Georgia ( CNN ) -- The two men who claimed to have found the carcass of Bigfoot have surfaced to say : Hey , it was just a joke . Matt Whitton has been fired from his job as a police officer because of his role in the hoax . Not everyone is laughing . In an exclusive interview with CNN affiliate WSB , the two hoaxers -- car salesman Rick Dyer and now-fired police officer Matt Whitton -- said the whole situation began as a joke and then got out of hand . `` It 's just a big hoax , a big joke , '' Dyer said . `` It 's Bigfoot , '' Dyer explained . `` Bigfoot does n't exist . '' Whitton chimed in : `` All this was a big joke . It got into something way bigger than it was supposed to be . '' Watch the two men explain their `` joke '' » . At a news conference in California last week , the two men had stood by their claims that they had discovered Bigfoot 's corpse and had it on ice . Scientific analysis would prove it , they said . Not quite . Now the two Georgia men admit that the hairy , icy blob was an Internet-purchased Sasquatch costume stuffed with possum roadkill and slaughterhouse leftovers . Whitton and Dyer say that when they came up with the hoax , they had no idea it would become a media circus . `` It got legs and ran . It 's crazy now , '' Dyer told WSB . Co-hoaxer Whitton agrees : `` It started off as some YouTube videos and a Web site . We 're all about having fun . '' `` Fun '' is n't exactly how Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner sees it . He has kicked Whitton off the police force . `` He lied on national TV , '' Turner says of Whitton , `` so a defense attorney now could say , 'How do we know you 're not lying now ? ' `` Whitton and Dyer had announced that they had found the body of a 7-foot-7-inch , 500-pound half-ape , half-human creature while hiking in the north Georgia mountains in June . They also said they had spotted about three similar living creatures . Still unclear is how much money Whitton and Dyer got out of the hoax . Steve Kulls , who maintains the SquatchDetective Web site and hosts a similarly named Internet radio program , first interviewed Dyer on July 28 for the radio program . On August 12 , Kulls said , Dyer and Whitton `` requested an undisclosed sum of money as an advance , expected from the marketing and promotion . '' Two days later , after signing a receipt and counting the money , Dyer and Whitton showed the Searching for Bigfoot team the freezer containing what they claimed was the carcass : `` Something appearing large , hairy and frozen in ice , '' Kulls wrote on the Web site . It was , as many had suspected , an ape-like costume stuffed with entrails . After the news conference last week , Dyer and Whitton disappeared from view . The truth came out over the weekend . In a Web posting this week , Kulls wrote that `` action is being instigated against the perpetrators . '' The two hoaxers have hired attorney Steve Lister to represent them . `` There have been some threats made to them for both civil and criminal prosecution , '' Lister said . The attorney says the Bigfoot incident `` got out of hand . '' Dyer , asked whether he ever thought that the hoopla had become more than just a joke , implied that everyone should have known it was a hoax . `` Well , we told 10 different stories , '' he said . `` Everyone knew we were lying . ''
Two men surface to say Bigfoot ' was just a joke . They say their idea of ` ` and fun '' turned into something bigger than expected . Word for men , incident ` ` got out of hand ''