Cole Bartiromo

Cole Bartiromo, now going by Cole Anthony, is an American blogger, formerly accused scammer, convicted felon, and public speaker from Mission Viejo, California. 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; civil penalties from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; 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 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

The family faced bankruptcy twice through the 1990s. 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. 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. and made $240,000 off auctioning the cards, which lead him to be interviewed on ESPN's Page 2 series. He bought large amounts of penny stocks, for some days close to half of the volume, IB2001 advertised itself as being for "guaranteed" and "risk-free" investments His messages to the investors would include comments making fun of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and comparing the government agency to the Nineteen Eighty-Four character Big Brother. off swindling around 3,300 investors out of their money. 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. Throughout the entire history of these charges, Bartiromo plead the fifth. 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." one of them being the Chicago Tribune: "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." 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.

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 He did time at Kern County starting July 5, 2004. The profile picture was not of Long but of another black man wearing a white cap. His actions on the blog when related to notable news stories included uploading pictures of Paul Walker's dead body in a car crash, and criticizing the jurors of George Zimmerman's murder trial for ruling against the defendant. 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.