Cole Bartiromo, now going by Cole Anthony, is an American blogger, formerly accused scammer,

convicted felon A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "''félonie''") to describe an offense that r ...

, and public speaker from

Mission Viejo Mission Viejo ( ; language change, corruption of ; ) is a Commuter town, commuter city in the Saddleback Valley in Orange County, California, United States. Mission Viejo is considered one of the largest Planned community, master-planned commu ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. He has engaged in various financial schemes and other activities that have garnered him national media coverage; appearances on shows such as '' MoneyTrack'', '' The Dr. Phil Show'', and ''

Dateline NBC ''Dateline NBC'' (also known simply as ''Dateline'') is a weekly American television news magazine reality legal show that is broadcast on NBC. It was previously the network's flagship general interest news magazine, but now focuses mainly on ...

''; civil penalties from the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

; and federal prison time. When Bartiromo was very young, he had a desire for fast-and-easy moneymaking not only out of avarice but also his family's poor financial situation, where the Bartiromos faced bankruptcy twice and a home foreclosure in the 1990s. His first online financial frauds were done with his father in 2000, when he went around

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

taking money from would-be sports card collectors. The next year, while still in high school, he ran two online securities fraud operations that got him in trouble with the SEC. From May to July of that year, he ran a pump-and-dump scheme that made a net profit of more than $91,000, and from November 1 to December 15, he operated the service Invest Better 2001 (IB2001), which advertised "guaranteed" and "risk-free" returns for investing in sporting investments. The 1,000-plus people, in total, invested $1.6 million into IB2001's programs, but none of them had any money regained. The SEC filed an enforcement charge against IB2001 on December 13, 2001, and, with the help of research by two sports card collectors previously scammed by Bartiromo, identified the 17-year-old as the person behind IB2001 on January 7, 2002. On that day, he garnered national news attention for being the second youngest person, at the time, to commit an online fraud, behind a 15-year-old New Jersey resident named

Jonathan Lebed Jonathan G. Lebed (born September 29, 1984) is an American businessman and former stock trader who reached an out-of-court civil settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at age 15 for stock manipulation. Early life and e ...

. Due to the SEC's IB2001 charge and another one filed on April 7, 2002, against Bartiromo for his pump-and-dump scheme, he not only had to give the victims their money back but also face a $1.2 million civil penalty that ballooned to $2.7 million in 2010 due to interest. He was also taxed by the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting Taxation in the United States, U.S. federal taxes and administerin ...

$1.1 million for running Invest Better 2001. In 2004, as a result of charges by the SEC for

mail and wire fraud Mail fraud and wire fraud are terms used in the United States to describe the use of a physical (e.g., the U.S. Postal Service) or electronic (e.g., a phone, a telegram, a fax, or the Internet) mail system to defraud another, and are U.S. feder ...

and

bank fraud Bank fraud is the use of potentially illegal means to obtain money, assets, or other property owned or held by a financial institution, or to obtain money from depositors by fraudulently posing as a bank or other financial institution. In many ins ...

for eBay scams and bank account wiring schemes he committed in 2003, he faced a 33-month federal prison sentence and was prohibited from using the internet as part of his probation until 2010. In the 2010s, Bartiromo again received attention from the media for two reasons. One of them was for his involvement in running the crime investigation blog NewsBall, particularly its posts relating to the

murder of Skylar Neese Skylar Annette Neese (February 10, 1996July 6, 2012) was a sixteen-year-old American girl who disappeared from her home in Star City, West Virginia, around midnight on July 6, 2012. Her body was found in January 2013, across the nearby state li ...

; started in 2013, the blog revealed private details about crimes and incidents not normally covered by mainstream news outlets for ethical reasons. During the

2016 presidential election This national electoral calendar for 2016 lists the national/ federal elections held in 2016 in all sovereign states and their dependent territories. By-elections are excluded, though national referendums are included. January *7 January: Kiri ...

, he was being covered in the national news for his activities as a supporter of

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

, posting anti-Muslim messages on his

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

page and facing a cut on his forehead while fighting with protesters at

Costa Mesa Costa may refer to: Biology * Rib (Latin: ''costa''), in vertebrate anatomy * Costa (botany), the central strand of a plant leaf or thallus * Costa (coral), a stony rib, part of the skeleton of a coral * Costa (entomology), the leading edge o ...

Personal life

Cole Bartiromo is the oldest of three children (one son and two daughters). His parents were John Bartiromo (born circa 1958), who had sixteen years of working as a material handler at

Southern California Edison Southern California Edison (SCE), the largest subsidiary of Edison International, is the primary electric utility company for much of Southern California. It provides 15 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximate ...

as of 2002, and Jeanise (also born circa 1958), a

junior college A junior college is a type of post-secondary institution that offers vocational and academic training that is designed to prepare students for either skilled trades and technical occupations or support roles in professions such as engineering, a ...

instructor where she taught to

interpreter Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...

s and also ran a daycare.

Financial activities

1990s: Background

When he was a young kid, Bartiromo had a "growing obsession with making money." This was first evident when he sold candy bars to his neighbors as part of fundraising events for his little league baseball team and set the prices a few dollars higher than what he was allowed to sell them at. In addition to greed, both Bartiromo and his father attributed his focus for quick wealth on his family's financial struggles. The family faced bankruptcy twice through the 1990s. By April 1993, their $2,800 monthly income was around $200 below what they were required to pay, including a time-share at the Las Vegas-based Jockey Club Resort which they owed $4,000. John sold the share in April 2001 in order to pay for his kids' college education. In 1993, the family filed bankruptcy at Santa Ana's U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The debts were discharged by the court in June 1993. In April 1997, they filed bankruptcy again, this time from John failing to pay over $23,000 of his mortgage, further worsened by a lender increasing the amount to $237,419. The court chose to dismiss it in May 1997 and prohibited another petition for six months, resulting in the family's three-bedroom and two-bath home to be foreclosed by a bank in the summer of that year. The Bartiromos stayed in the home by having John's sister, Donna Smallwood, pay the mortgage. In 1998, the Bartiromos paid Smallwood for the house and refinanced the mortgage loan in November 1999.

1999–2001: Sports card trading and pump-and-dump scheme

Around the time the loan was refinanced, Cole and his father started to become involved in sports cards trading on

, working under the screenname "TigerWoods." The two performed double-digit-dollar sports card scams on

, taking money from (to them) anonymous, faceless collectors. Cole's peers were aware of his obsession with sports cards and were annoyed by his boasts of profiting off them; one of his classmates recalled in 2002 that the space of Bartiromos' living room was taken up by sports memorabilia such as signs, pictures, and posters. In the fall of 2000, at the age of 16, Bartiromo learned about Tiger Woods cards that came with issues of '' Sports Illustrated for Kids'' going up in value. He bought several issues, cut out two Tiger Woods cards from them, and made $240,000 off auctioning the cards, which lead him to be interviewed on

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

's ''

Page 2 ESPN.com is the official website of ESPN. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of ESPN Inc. History Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including: ...

'' series. His father, taking $235,000 of it, allowed Cole to open a stock account that started with the other $5,000. Using his stock account, Bartiromo ran a

pump-and-dump Pump and dump (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements (pump), in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price (dump). O ...

scheme around May 14, 2001 to July 5, 2001. He bought large amounts of

penny stock Penny stocks are common shares of small public companies that trade for less than five dollars per share. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) uses the term "penny stock" to refer to a security, a financial instrument which repr ...

s, for some days close to half of the

volume Volume is a measure of regions in three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch) ...

, and spread more than 6,000 messages on message boards falsely hyping up the stocks. Fifteen

publicly traded companies A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...

bought into the messages, and Bartiromo traded millions of shares with them; as a result, their stock prices went down. In one night, his stock account went up from $5,000 to $50,000 from the scheme, and the net profit he made totaled more than $91,000. While operating the scheme, he was shocked how easy it was to dupe trading companies into fraudulent stock offers on the web.

2001–03: Invest Better 2001

From November 1 to December 15, 2001, when Bartiromo was a senior in high school, he operated a

securities fraud Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information. IB2001 advertised itself as being for "guaranteed" and "risk-free" investments betted on professional and college sporting events: "we don't just bet on favorites to win, we bet on really favored teams." The site also stated it wasn't like other "Ponzi scheme" sites in that "we actually do invest." The service offered four get-rich-quick programs: a "125% 3 Day Ongoing Program," where an investor would get 125% of what he invested, the "250% 1 Week Ongoing Program," which promised a 250% return in a week, the "1250% 1 Month Program," where the consumer received 1250% of what he financed into IB2001, and the "2500% Christmas Miracle Program," which promises 2500% if the money invested into the site between November 1 and December 15, 2001. Most victims of IB2001 claimed they were seduced into it due to the "warm" and "witty" professionalism of Tom Manning, an alias Bartiromo used when acting as the leader of the service. His messages to the investors would include comments making fun of the

(SEC) and comparing the government agency to the ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984'') is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically ...

'' character

Big Brother Big Brother may refer to: * a brother senior in birth order Literature * Big Brother (''Nineteen Eighty-Four''), a character from George Orwell's novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' * ''Big Brother'' (magazine), a skateboarding culture magazine * ' ...

. To make the operation uncatchable to law enforcement, Bartiromo kept transferring the funds to different e-commerce sites to avoid them, although he told his investors it was simply to prevent the funds from being hacked. As the SEC was starting to investigate IB2001, he took down the website on December 1. On IB2001's message boards, he instructed investors to post "NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS" and erased all the rants about the service, also blocking SEC lawyers from commenting. He also masked its shutdown to investors as done by "hackers" instead of himself. On December 9, he sent out an email reassuring his customers that IB2001 was the "real deal" and the rants were nothing more than "ridiculous," grooming the investors by calling them "pioneers" who are "like those selected for

Noah's Arc ''Noah's Arc'' is an American cable television comedy-drama series that aired for two seasons on the Logo network from October 19, 2005 to October 4, 2006. The show centered on the lives of four African-American gay friends who share personal a ...

." He also announced in the same message IB2001 would turn into a "private," email-only operation. In a quick final method to trick new clients, IB2001's last announcement would be that it would be "closed" to new investors on December 15, 2001; That was the day its MSN message boards actually shutdown. In the end, Bartiromo made approximately $1.6 million off swindling around 3,300 investors out of their money. He used around $900,000 of it to put it into an online account held at a

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

-based casino.

The search for IB2001's administrator

Quickly after IB2001 began, complaints started to fill up its bulletin boards, which caused the SEC to examine the service. The SEC first emailed Bartiromo, as his Manning alias, on November 19; Manning responded by lying that IB2001 had "ceased operations" and that only a few "Internet buddies" ran it and made only around $5,000 from it. In the end of that month, the SEC called Danny Matson, whose name was used as a credit for being an administrator and billing contact for IB2001. The commission learned Matson actually knew nothing about the securities fraud and that he really was a sports card collector who was owed $25,000 for a card a man named Tim Marino offered him online. The SEC noticed that the name sounded very similar to Tom Manning. Matson then phoned San Jose sports card collector Ramon Sanchez, another one of Marino's victims who bought a

Michael Jordan Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963), also known by his initials MJ, is an American businessman and former professional basketball player, who is currently a minority owner of the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Ass ...

rookie card from him in October 2001 but never actually got it. The first email Sanchez received about buying the card was from an email address that included Bartiromo's last name. The email instructed him to go to an

instant message Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate (real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involvin ...

program account named "Tigercards" to arrange the purchase. The man using the account identified himself as Tim Marino. The deal involved Marino directing Sanchez to PayPal-send money to an online betting account that was under Matson's name. Both Matson and Sanchez decided to search for the operator of IB2001 by contacting its clients, one of them sending the investor forum of the service's message boards. It featured a comment from an account named mariners116, who the two suspected was run by Bartiromo given that he was a big fan of the Seattle Mariners according to his friends. They also placed the contact names the scammer used ("Tigercards," "Tom Marino," "Bartiromo," "Tom Manning") in an internet search engine and, through it, found ESPN's story of Bartiromo's 2000 auctioning of the Tiger Woods cards. The two sent all of this information to the SEC, and the commission identified the person behind IB2001 as Bartiromo on January 7, 2002, among other ten anonymous "John and Jane Does" involved.

Charges and settlements

On December 13, 2001, the SEC filed an enforcement charge against the service. It claimed violations of Sections 5(a), 5(c) and 17(a) of the 1933

Securities Act The Securities Act of 1933, also known as the 1933 Act, the Securities Act, the Truth in Securities Act, the Federal Securities Act, and the '33 Act, was enacted by the United States Congress on May 27, 1933, during the Great Depression and afte ...

, Section 10(b) of the 1934

Securities Exchange Act The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (also called the Exchange Act, '34 Act, or 1934 Act) (, codified at et seq.) is a law governing the secondary trading of securities (stocks, bonds, and debentures) in the United States of America. A landm ...

, and

Rule 10b-5 SEC Rule 10b-5, codified at , is one of the most important rules targeting securities fraud in the United States. It was promulgated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), pursuant to its authority granted under § 10(b) of the Secu ...

, and argued that the claims of the investment being non-risky were "materially false and misleading," because "gambling by its very nature requires the undertaking of risk." On January 7, 2002, an amended complaint was filed by the SEC in the

United States District Court for the Southern District of New York The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (in case citations, S.D.N.Y.) is a federal trial court whose geographic jurisdiction encompasses eight counties of the State of New York. Two of these are in New York Ci ...

that identified Bartiromo and another ten "John and Jane Does." Thanks to a partial judgement issued by the court that same day, Bartiromo was prohibited from doing further online investment services, had all out of his and IB2001's assets frozen, and was forced to disgorge any IB2001 assets into the court's account. On April 29, 2002, the SEC filed another complaint against Bartiromo for the pump-and-dump scheme, citing violations of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and Rule 10b-5. A partial final settlement was ordered by the court on May 29 requiring him to disgorge all of the money made from the scheme. Throughout the entire history of these charges, Bartiromo

plead the fifth The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution creates several constitutional rights, limiting governmental powers focusing on criminal procedures. It was ratified, along with nine other amendments, in 1791 as part of the Bi ...

. On May 4, 2005, a final order was made for the two complaints, a civil penalty of $1,273,371 imposed on Bartiromo by judge Barbara S. Jones. As the court reasoned, "the boldness of the fraud conclusively demonstrates the Defendant's high level of scienter, and because the risk of loss and the actual loss was substantial. The scheme ensnared approximately 5,000 victims, and would have continued to mushroom had Bartiromo not been caught." In the case, Bartiromo stated he was broke after returning money to the participants, but Jones dismissed the claim after the SEC introduced evidence that he "owned a collection of sports cards worth several hundred thousand dollars."

Reactions

Shortly after the January 7, 2002 settlement, Bartiromo received attention from national news outlets covering his scam, one of them being the ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'': "Though Bartiromo isn't the youngest person to run afoul of the SEC--in 2000, a 15-year-old from New Jersey agreed to forfeit more than $270,000 in profits from promoting, and then selling, little-known stocks--the dynamics of this case are extraordinary because it took in so many investors who apparently were either won over by claims that were clearly too good to be true, or willing to take a chance anyway." The same day the news articles were being published, Bartiromo became a celebrity at the school, so much so that a teacher asked him for his autograph. He was heavily talked about by teachers and classmates at his high school. There were debates in civics classes about whether Bartiromo was to be blamed or the lack of thinking on the victims. Some students found his scheme to be "heroic," "smart and gutsy," according to the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. Bartiromo's baseball couch P.J. Sandoval explained that they were "amazed how a minor can pull off such an intricate scheme," elaborating that he was "pretty patient, tenacious risky ndgenius too." Bartiromo's neighbors and other acquatances were also shocked, given that, while he operated IB2001, they only noticed him acting ordinary for a teenager, like watching other people's dogs, working at a pizzeria, shooting hoops, and successfully attending all of his baseball practices. During a winter game he played, his father apologized to the attending parents for the media coverage of his son's scam. On May 17, 2003, A ''Los Angeles Times'' article was published about Baritormo filing a $50 million lawsuit against Trabuco Hills High School for kicking him off the school's baseball team; he argued that the school didn't give him due process, thus indicating the school's decisions were based on "personal vendettas" and their "own jealousy/anger/spite of Bartiromo's local fame." Describing the suit as switching "between standard legal language and occasional high school jargon," the ''Times'' article claimed that he acted as his own attorney and filed the suit at the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana. There has been no further update of the case.

2003–10: Wells Fargo, Ebay frauds, and later punishments

In 2003, Bartiromo scammed successful North American eBay bidders out of money they used for buying telephones, tire rims, and other items that he never shipped. Then, on August 24 of that year, Bartiromo tried to wire $450,000 out of an account from a Wells Fargo bank in Mission Viejo in order to have money for gambling with a London sportsbook. He asked, under false identification given by 20-year-old Theo Liu, to wire the account as well as cash the checks made from the eBay scam. The employee, who was recruited by Oscar Godinez, also 20 years old, for Bartiromo, told the bank's supervisor about the possible fraud. The supervisor contacted the

United States Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security tasked with conducting criminal investigations and providing protection to American political leaders, thei ...

, which set up a dummy account for Bartiromo to transfer the money to. The agency arrested him after the transfer, and on January 30, 2004, he was charged with

. In a newspaper interview published that same day, Bartiromo claimed he was only going to use $40,000 of the money in the account, the other money going to Godinez and Liu. He also argued that the government set him up for the fraud, but this was denied by a Los Angeles attorney spokesman named Them Mrozek. On March 1, 2004, Bartiromo plead guilty to not only the bank fraud charge but also

for his eBay scam, which he admitted to doing during his plead. At the time, having these two charges guaranteed a maximum federal prison sentence of 35 years; however, judge

John F. Walter John F. Walter (born November 3, 1944) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Education and career Walter was born in Buffalo, New York. He received a Bachelor of Arts degr ...

, when sentencing Bartiromo at the

United States District Court for the Central District of California The United States District Court for the Central District of California (in case citations, C.D. Cal.; commonly referred to as the CDCA or CACD) is a United States district court, federal trial court that serves over 19 million people in South ...

on June 14, reduced the penalty to 33 months of jail time and $20,000 restitution based on Bartiromo's denouncements of his claims that the government tried to frame him and his father's request for leniency. He did time at

Kern County Kern County is a county (United States), county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 909,235. Its county seat is Bakersfield, California, Bakersfield. Kern County compris ...

starting July 5, 2004. He was still under probation, meaning he was not allowed to use the internet, after his sentence was finished until 2010. From November 2009 to late July 2010, he was incarcerated for using a prohibited cellphone in a halfway house. He completed his required service in the halfway house in September 2010.

2009–10: Aftermath

By December 2010, Bartiromo was living with his family unemployed and poor, his 2005 $1.2 million penalty rose to $2.7 million due to interest, and he was also taxed $1.1 million by the IRS for IB2001. In September 2009, he was interviewed on a season three episode of the show '' MoneyTrack'' about his online scams, titled "Lessons From a High School Scam Artist." From the 2000s decade to 2010, Bartiromo spoke in various interviews and criminal testimonies about turning his life around, aspiring to write a movie, a book, and rap songs about his life, own the

Seattle Mariners The Seattle Mariners are an American professional baseball team based in Seattle. The Mariners compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League West, West Division. The team joined the American ...

, and work as an entrepreneur. Reflecting on the scams, he opined that while he regretted the online crimes he committed, his victims were partially at fault: "If you decide to invest, you're taking a risk, you're making a gamble, so hopefully you put in your research." Bartiromo had a brief stint in 2010 performing public speaking events about the consequences of the schemes he committed at schools such as

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

in the summer and

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona California State Polytechnic University Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) is a Public university, public Institute of Technology (United States)#Polytechnic universities, polytechnic research university in Pomona, California, United States. It is the l ...

in December. This events showed his first presentation of his brand known as ''The Dollar Scholar''.

NewsBall

In 2013, Bartiromo began Newsball, a blog that was initially meant to present his social media pranks; on

, he created fake profiles of notorious people being covered by popular news sources, including

Jared Lee Loughner Jared Lee Loughner (; born September 10, 1988) is an American mass murderer who pleaded guilty to 19 charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with the January 8, 2011, Tucson shooting, in which he shot and severely injured U.S. Re ...

and James DiMaggio. He documented responses from users towards the profiles on the blog. He would continue pulling off these types of pranks in 2016, when on July 17 of that year, the day Gavin Eugene Long murdered six policemen in

Baton Rouge, Louisiana Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...

, Bartiromo set up a hoax account on

that was under Long's name. The profile picture was not of Long but of another black man wearing a white cap. The account was suspended a day after it began. Later in 2013, however, Newsball transitioned into a blog exposing information most mainstream news outlets would otherwise not share publicly for ethical reasons, including the names of those only somewhat related to incidents, victims, and underage people that have committed crimes. His actions on the blog when related to notable news stories included uploading pictures of

Paul Walker Paul William Walker IV (September 12, 1973 – November 30, 2013) was an American actor. He was best known for his role as Brian O'Conner in the ''Fast & Furious'' franchise. Paul Walker began his career as a child actor in the 1980s, gainin ...

's dead body in a car crash, and criticizing the jurors of

George Zimmerman George Michael Zimmerman (born October 5, 1983) is an American man who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African-American, in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012. On July 13, 2013, he was acquitted of second-degree murder in '' F ...

's murder trial for ruling against the defendant. The blog gained notoriety thanks to its investigation the murder of a 16-year-old girl from West Virginia named Skylar Neese. Before Neese's two underaged killers were charged, Bartiromo looked for the names of them by scouring social media profiles; in addition to posting the names publicly on Newsball, he used their accounts of the killers and their friends to post several videos and photos of them as well as posting the names of the friends that refused to ask his questions. According to Daleen Berry, who wrote a book about Neese's death, she received emails from the teenagers Bartiromo contacted that claimed he threatened them and their families for information; these claims were denied by Bartiromo in 2014. Bartiromo's searches received the attention of shows such as ''Dateline'' and ''The Dr. Phil Show'' and garnered him appearances on them. However, the shows left out his Newsball work and only presented that he was involved in investigating Neese's death. In describing Bartiromo's appearance on ''The Dr. Phil Show'', ''

The Daily Beast ''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. Founded in 2008, the website is owned by IAC Inc. It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief ...

'' writer Stephanie Diani wrote that "he sat in the front row wearing a size-too-large suit and fought with several of the onstage guests." Diani found Bartiromo running a website like Newsball odd: "this man who blames the media for his own inescapable past now seems to wants to make a name for himself, at least in part, by destroying the reputations of others. Bartiromo wants a second chance by denying one to anyone else."

2016: Trump rally incident

On April 28, 2016, during the

, Bartiromo went to a rally for the candidate he supported,

, held at

Pacific Amphitheatre The Pacific Amphitheatre is an amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, Orange County, California. The amphitheatre is located on the grounds of the OC Fair & Event Center. It opened in July 1983 with Barry Manilow as the first performer. The venue curren ...

. Trump autographed Bartiromo's $500 bill after his speech. Bartiromo was still wearing his "Make America Great Again" hat when outside. While outside, a protester knocked Bartiromo's hat off. When trying to retrieve it, he hit his head and suffered a 1-inch cut.

References

Citations

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bartiromo, Cole American bloggers Criminals from California Living people People from Mission Viejo, California 1985 births Trabuco Hills High School alumni