Bad boy Cole Bartiromo

Cole's in hot water again...

June 18, 2004

Veteran InfoPowa readers may recall the story about an enterprising but integrity-challenged Californian seventeen year old who screwed gullible investors out of a million bucks in an internet gambling swindle two years ago.

He was caught and paid his debt to society, but apparently this was not a learning experience for him, because he was sentenced this week to almost three years in jail for an unrelated scam he operated through online auctioneer eBay Inc.

Cole Bartiromo, 19, was sentenced by a federal judge to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay about $20,000 in restitution after pleading guilty back in February to charges that he posted items for sale on eBay and then collected payment, without actually shipping the goods.

He also pleaded guilty to bank fraud for attempting to convince a Wells Fargo employee to wire $400,000 to an offshore account he had established, and to cash checks for him received from victims in the eBay scam.

Bartiromo, from Mission Viejo, California, was 17 and in high school when federal securities regulators discovered he had obtained nearly $1 million from around 1,000 investors by promising them safe bets with online sportsbooks. They later found he had also made more than $90,000 in profits by manipulating the shares of at least 15 publicly-traded companies.

Bartiromo returned the money solicited from the investors and paid a settlement on the stock charges.

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