Bloomberg Rescinded Offer To Writer Jessica Pressler After New York Magazine Hoax
NEW YORK -- Bloomberg News rescinded a job offer this week to New York magazine writer Jessica Pressler after her profile of a teenage stock-picking multi-millionaire proved to be a hoax, according to a source familiar with the matter. The student had lied about making tens of millions of dollars on Wall Street.
Pressler, who was expected to join Bloomberg's investigative unit early next year, will stay on at New York, according to a memo sent Friday afternoon by Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss. The memo, first reported by Capital New York, did not mention the stock wiz story or Bloomberg.
A Bloomberg spokesman and Pressler both declined to comment.
Pressler profiled the student, Mohammed Islam, for the magazine’s recent “Reasons to Love New York” issue. The story ran with the accompanying headline: “Because a Stuyvesant Senior Made $72 Million Trading Stocks on His Lunch Break."
Pressler didn’t specifically confirm the “$72 million” rumor in the piece, but did report Islam was worth in the "high eight figures." That detail was later revealed to have been verified by a New York magazine fact-checker based a fraudulent bank record supplied by Islam.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/bloomberg-jessica-pressler_n_6348348.html
