After Bloomberg LP got hoodwinked into reporting a fictitious $12.5 billion bid for Gold Fields Ltd. by an unknown dealmaker named Edward Pastorini in April, the media giant has revealed the name and the face of the huckster: Lawrence Niren.
Bloomberg set three reporters on the case to unravel Niren's web and found him somewhere in Argentina's wine country. What's fascinating is the resources Bloomberg put on the case because, six years earlier, it did not hunt down another con man who not only riled the public markets with a fake bid, but appeared on Bloomberg TV as a guest.
In 2000 and 2001, Bloomberg and other major media outlets reported Emil Bernard's fictitious bids first for TWA then for US Airways. The Daily Deal on Aug. 7, 2001, poked holes in the Bernard story, ultimately leading the rest of the press to quietly bury the story, and the SEC to later charge Bernard with fraud.
Still no word on Bernard's whereabouts. —Matthew Wurtzel
