THE BENKA TRUTH PAGES

Bernarda "Benka" Pulko of Slovenia has recently completed what she is calling her solo motorcycle ride around the world.
On these pages you will be able to read some interesting stories about the truth behind the claim, as well as some sidebars contributed from sources around the world.

For instance, her ride was far from solo. A professional guide accompanied her on much of her trip. She used the services of the same professional guide to assist her in securing sponsorship from several sponsors, as well as planning her trip. While away from the guide she was often in daily contact with him, both by telephone and the Internet. A picture of her guide driving her BMW F650 (with her on the back) was taken outside the offices of a major New Zealand motorcycle magazine, KIWI RIDER.

More than one motorcycle was used, a second F650 being purchased and kept in the United States.

She calls herself a journalist, yet had to be contacted by an attorney representing a well-known author for copyright violations.

Additional legal problems surfaced when she was caught stealing information from another persons email account.

The "ride" from Ushuaia, Argentina (southernmost point in South America) to Buenos Aires was actually done with her motorcycle in a large truck. She had crashed several times riding into Ushuaia, so decided to truck the motorcycle to Buenos Aires rather than ride the road.

She does not posses a nursing license.

She was giving massages for a living before starting her trip, not a practicing nurse.

Once, when she crashed in India, she blamed a small girl on a bicycle for the crash, took the girls bicycle away and threw if off the road, then spit on the little girl.

Her trip was not a continuous one. She would often park her motorcycle and return to the United States where she would stay for up to three months at a time while working at a summer school in New York. She did this for 5 summers. Often she would park the motorcycle and "take a vacation" from her travels, flying to plans such as Bali (1 month) and Sir Lanka, often in the company of men.

In the coming months you will be able to read more about Ms. Pulko's claims to have circumnavigated the globe, solo, on a motorcycle. Return to this site for monthly updates.

HOW TO BURN SPONSORS AND GOOD GUYS

"…she uses people in ways that are not accepted in the broader social contract of our American culture." (A 2003 quote from burned American "good guy" supplier).

HIT AND RUN:

In July of 2003 Pulko made an order to an American sponsor she had been introduced to as a prot?g? in 1998. The sponsor had helped Pulko with numerous items when on her purported world ride, which was finished and publicized in December 2002.
Seven months after her trip was over she used an address that was false as her billing address, then had the order shipped to a second address, that of one of her friends in the USA. She did not pay for the order from either address. She collected the delivered order at the second address, then left the United States, outside of the reach of the sponsor. The sponsor, after an unsuccessful attempt at tracing her to the false address where she listed herself as being, decided to abandon efforts to collect.

LET'S PLAY AT BEING A JOURNALIST:

Purporting to be a well-known photojournalist, Pulko secures camping equipment from a major sporting goods supplier. The manufacturer expects to see their equipment in photographs published in major magazines. Instead, the equipment never leaves the United States and is stored with her USA motorcycle. No photos ever appear in any magazines or on any website showing the equipment, and never was a mention made of the manufacturer in any interviews or media publications.

FLOGG OFF SPONSORS PRODUCTS:

After a meeting with a major camera manufacturer, Pulko was given a camera by the executive. Within days she had taken it to a second hand photographic equipment store where she sold it for cash, which she pocketed.

COUNTERFEIT PAYMENT

A nice guy offers to use his company to help Pulko raise funds for her trip. He fronts $500.00 to for a media campaign. When the proceeds are received Pulko refuses to pay back the front money, keeping the entire proceeds to herself. Under pressure, she finally gives him a one hundred-dollar bill. Later she tells him it was counterfeit.

SPARE PARTS SCAM

Soliciting parts and accessories from suppliers who believe they will be used on her around the world F650 (owned, supplied and maintained [$8,000,00 rebuild in Japan] by BMW of Slovenia), Pulko uses the solicited items on her second F650 (bought used from BMW of Denver and kept in the USA).

"…she has shown no remorse for her dishonesty or theft. Part is denial, part personality disorder." (Disgruntled 'sponsor' she ripped-off in the United States, 2003)

HOAX UNCOVERED IN PRINT MEDIA

A widely circulated 2004 article titled “Benka Pulko – Motorcycling Women’s Calamity Jane” has been published debunking numerous claims by Bernarda Pulko, while comparing Pulko to America’s Martha Canary (ca. 1848-1903), better known as “Calamity Jane.”

In the introduction, John le Carre is quoted. “He said of a character like Pulko, they are ‘someone who out of bravado pretends to have done things far more drastic than anything he (she) has done.’”

Calamity Jane was the daughter of a drunken father and brothel madame who, at an early age, “took up her mother’s profession and followed the construction gangs of the Union Pacific Railroad through Utah.” Her “sobriquet ‘Calamity Jane,’” the article says, most likely came to her “due to her profession where prostitutes were know as ‘janes’ and the slang for venereal disease was ‘calamity.’” The author notes that both “Benka” and Calamity Jane go by monikers, neither being their real names.

“The western writers of the late 1800’s accepted Calamity Jane’s claims to have been an ‘Army scout, mule skinner, consort to Wild Bill Hickok, midwife, vigilante, Robin Hood thief, nurse, lawman (law person), gambler, stagecoach driver and Indian Scout and fighter. Most of these writers greatly exaggerated what they knew of her, knowing readers in the East would buy and believe nearly anything published about the West. It was not until the 1950s that researchers started to adequately portray Calamity as a low-class prostitute and amoral braggart.’ “In 1901 female novelist Josephine Brake set out to find the legendary Calamity Jane and eventually did so in the aptly named coal camp of Horr, south of Livingston, Montana. There she was ‘lying in a dirty bunk in a Negro house of ill-repute, sick and half-dead from a long drunk.’”

The article says of Pulko’s purported solo ride around the globe, “Her plan was simple: Secure the use of a motorcycle, then solicit others to pay for or provide the money and needed support to make an extended trip. After the vacation was concluded she proposed to publish a book, the proceeds from the sale which would carry her until she could find another ‘project.’ She proposed to promote the book through a traveling slide show, pocketing the proceeds as she went along.” This was a plan similar to Calamity Jane’s when she published her own book and took it on a traveling side show to unknowing audiences in the eastern USA. “One person recently wrote after seeing Pulko’s multi-media presentation, ‘I didn’t believe a thing she said.”

Other sections of the article cite Pulko’s working for wages in America while not having a valid Work Permit, non-payment of taxes, a police report filed, copyright violations, and lawyers being contacted “when she was caught committing computer fraud.” As for her claims to be a journalist, the article says “she proffered herself as a ‘nurse, biology teacher and journalist’ when in fact her main source of income in Slovenia has been working in a spa and privately as a masseuse.’”

The main point of the article appears to be to try and separate the many valid Guinness Record holders and authentic women motorcycle travellers from Pulko. “The biggest damage the Benka Hoax has probably done, other than to liberate some foolish sponsors and contributors of money they could have more wisely spent elsewhere, is the bring shame to many real women motorcyclists around the world. As the general public becomes more aware of the Benka Hoax and how they were so easily duped, the more claimed accomplishments of other women in the motorcycling world fall under dark clouds of question. If the general public was so easily fooled by the claims of the Slovene woman motorcyclist, have they too been fooled by the claims of other women merely because they were women, or is Benka Pulko just one bad case of the Janes?”

“Finally there are the 1,000’s of valid and honorable Guinness Book of Records holders. Knowing that Benka so easily sold her hoax to Guinness makes one question the claims of other motorcycle record holders. While much of the Guinness Records process is based on the honor system, are those other motorcycle record holders just as dishonorable as Pulko?”

The article closes with a reference to another farce of the Wild West of America, one concocted by Hollywood scriptwriters for the movie “Little Big Man”, staring Dustin Hoffman. In the movie, Little Big Man (Hoffman), who claimed to be 121 years old, … ‘tells about everything from his adoption by Cheyenne Indians to his marriages and friendship with Wild Bill Hickok. His tall tales indicate he just may be one of the biggest liars who roamed the West.’ “One hundred year’s later do the tall tales of Benka place her in the category of the biggest motorcycle liar to roam the print and cyber world, or will the press be quicker than the 1800’s media to see another Calamity Jane?”

Some other mentions in the article include:

1. Pulko’s admission that one of the things she had to learn as she began her working of the media was how ‘to promote herself.’ “This meant she had to learn how to get her false messages published in the print media.”

2. “She would later manufacture claims that were wildly unbelievable, like how she ‘changed 19’ tires while riding around the world. The fact is her hands were not strong enough to change the tire on her motorcycle. Men most often performed the changing of her tires while Benka stood by smiling and watched.”

3. Rather than tackle the treacherous high-speed roads and autobahns of Europe as a novice rider when she started her trip “she had the motorcycle shipped directly to New York for the first phase of her ‘around the world ride.’ Benka had previously worked and traveled in the United States and made contact with several BMW motorcycle clubs. She also had the promise of temporary room, board and compensation at a New York boarding school she could use as a base for her sponsorship solicitations, well away from the high taxing authorities of her Native Slovenia. While in America she could take an inexpensive motorcycle riding course (as opposed to an expensive European course) and practice on the sedate roads of America with riding acquaintances before tackling the more severe roads of third world countries. During her time in America on a temporary Visitor Permit (90 day) she began soliciting help and funds through local motorcycle groups, eluding IRS and state taxing authorities by darting out of the country at the end of her Visitor’s Permit.”

4. “She also claimed her five-year ride had been continuous when in fact it was often halted while she pursued other interests. For instance, each summer during her claimed ‘five years on the road’ she stored her motorcycle and flew from where she was to the United States.” While there she would stay on a 90-day Visitor Permit “soliciting funds from various sources…” “At the end of the 90 days she would return to where she had stored her motorcycle and continue on her journey.”

5 “Another of her wild claims was she had ridden solo around the world, a claim that has now been proven to be false. A professional motorcycle guide accompanied her much of the time on her ride, and often when he was not helping her she had other riding companions. Probably better described as the ‘Queen of the Truck Riders’ Benka was quick to pitch her motorcycle onto a truck whenever a rough section of road presented itself, such as in Cambodia.”

6. “While not the drinker Calamity Jane was, Benka Pulko was one of the wilder women travellers during her purported ride around the world, often abandoning her ‘world ride’ for weeks at a time and traveling to places like Bali in the company of married and unmarried men. Privately she referred to these trysts as ‘vacations’ but publicly passed them off as part of her ‘work’ as a traveller, seldom mentioning that men accompanied her and that she was not riding her motorcycle during those segments of her world ride.”

7. “On another occasion she was tossed over by a boyfriend who caught her stealing from him….” He said afterwards, “Her unrepentant thievery violated any trust I had of her…. I wanted nothing to do with her.”

8. “Later she said of the men around her, especially those giving her money and help (she often referred to them as “sponsors”), ‘They’re idiots. I show up and they give me money.’ Sometime she shared her favors with men, but most often not, suggesting they would contribute…or not.”

Other European women have been able to pass off incredible tales to the American press, like “Elena” from the Ukraine, who wrote an Internet story about riding her motorcycle through a nuclear hotspot. She was later debunked when it was learned she had parked the motorcycle and taken a bus ride through the area instead. A claim by Pulko to have been the first woman to ride through Saudi Arabia, and recognized by Guinness for doing so, has also been debunked. An American BMW club magazine (BMWOAN) published the claim based on Pulko’s statements. Another BMW motorcycle club publication, ON THE LEVEL, in August, 2004, wrote, “People are claiming Benka fooled the BMW world (BMWMOAN especially), Guinness Records, and much of the American motorcycle press. Halton [Brian Halton of CITY BIKE magazine] pointed out that one of the few sources that questioned Benka’s claims was ON THE LEVEL.”

The Calamity Jane-Benka Pulko article points out how easy it was for Pulko to mix truth with fiction and sell the rather fishy story to the world, whether via the Internet or through a book/media show. Calamity Jane did it in the 1800’s with her book and sideshow act, and Pulko has followed suit with her book and slide show.

As one published source said, “Fine work smelling the mackerel.”