It looks like some of those Legendary Pokemon caught in Pokemon GO were real after all. Pokemon GO developer Niantic Labs has released a new statement on the claims of trainers coming across legendary Pokemon, like Articuno.
According to Niantic, no one was supposed to have those Pokemon and anyone who has them, won't have them very much longer.
"We recently noticed that a few Legendary Pokemon got into a few accounts when they shouldn’t have", Niantic stated to IGN. "To preserve the game’s integrity and as a measure of fairness, we have rectified the situation and revoked the legendary Pokemon from the Trainers’ accounts".
The most prominent claim of a Legendary Pokemon being found in-game came from an Ohio woman named Kaitlyn Covey who claimed that Niantic had given her the bird as an apology. Her claims here brushed off as false, even after a livestream of the Legendary bird and showing off the email that Niantic had sent her (mostly because Niantic spelled the bird's name wrong).
Well, the rest of us are just going to have to deal with being the unlucky few who didn't get the opportunity to play with Articuno… though this does show that Niantic has plans to bring Legendary Pokemon to the game.