This situation just keeps getting worse. Last week, renowned Japanese composer Mamoru Samuragochi (Resident Evil: Director’s Cut, Onimusha) admitted to hiring a ghost composer to assist him on his work. In a story published by the New York Times on Wednesday, the composer shared another bit of news. Apparently, he’s not really deaf.

For the unfamiliar, Samuragochi has struggled with a degenerative hearing condition that steadily worsened in the mid to late 90s. At age 35, while scoring Onimusha, he completely lost his hearing. According a statement he shared with NYT, he revealed his condition has gradually improved. “It has recovered to the level where I can sometimes grasp words when someone speaks clearly and slowly close to my ears, though the sounds are still muffled and skewed,” Samuragochi said.

The thing is, this statement doesn’t entirely coincide with what his ghost composer, Tagashi Niigaki, said during a press conference last week.

It would seem that Niigaki was under the impression that Samuragochi could hear just fine. “We held normal interactions,” Niigaki said. “At first, he indicated that his hearing was deteriorating to me as well. But during our interactions, he returned to normal.”

Yikes. It’s bad enough when one of the greatest video composers of all time admits he was a fraud, but if he lied about his hearing on top of that, that’s just nasty.