5WPR Shoots Down New York Exclusive on Boy Genius Investor

As we read the original story last night we thought, “this is too good to be true.” And so it was.

Thanks to our fellow media folks at The New York Observer, we now know that 17-year-old pseudo-genius/high school student Mohammed Islam featured in New York magazine’s “Reasons to Love New York” feature is not, in fact, a wealthy investor. Once the lie was exposed, he did what any embarrassed teenager in the spotlight would do: he hired 5WPR for crisis communications.

In the subsequent NYO piece, we learned several things including the fact that someone at 5W is a big fan of Jasper Johns.

Here’s an exchange about the money Islam allegedly made playing the stock market:

She said ‘have you made $72 million’?

[I led her to believe] I had made even more than $72 million on the simulated trades.