National Enquirer sold to indicted former MoviePass CEO in $100M deal: Report

The scandal-ridden tabloid National Enquirer, which used catch-and-kill methods to bury stories about Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, has been sold to a tycoon with a colorful past of his own.

The Enquirer’s parent company, a360 Media, said on Monday it had reached an agreement to sell the supermarket’s flagship product – along with other publications of the National Examiner, Globe and National Enquirer UK – to a group run by disgraced former MoviePass chairman Theodore Farnsworth.

Farnsworth, who faced criminal charges of securities fraud last November, said the deal with the Enquirer and others was worth roughly $100 million, according to the New York Times.

The Enquirer was reportedly on sale for about four years before Farnsworth purchased it as part of a new company, VVIP Ventures, created by Vinco Ventures and Farnsworth founded Icon Publishing. Vinco owns Lomotif, which is positioned as a competitor to TikTok.

The sale to Farnsworth came after he and others were accused of misleading investors about MoviePass, a once-popular movie ticketing startup. Farnsworth’s spokesman said his lawyers will fight the charges, according to CNBC.

Farnsworth was approached by The Post for comment on the Enquirer deal and his fraud case.

In 2018, the National Enquirer got into its own legal mess for using a “catch and kill” tactic where the tabloid allegedly paid for articles about Donald Trump and never published them. The move was supposed to help Trump become president.

Federal prosecutors have agreed not to prosecute the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media, over a $150,000 silence fee given by the tabloid to Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who claims she had an affair with Trump. The company then deliberately kept McDougal’s story hidden until after the election.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also accused the tabloid of trying to blackmail him in 2019 with embarrassing nude photos he sent to his girlfriend.

The American media sold the National Enquirer and some other publications in April 2019 to James Cohen, the former head of the Hudson News airport newsstand, but the deal never went through.

In August 2020, American Media CEO David Pecker stepped down from the company, which was taken over by a360 logistics firm based in Smyrna, Georgia.

The deal to sell the Enquirer comes a week after Pecker and his lawyer were spotted at a Manhattan courthouse where a grand jury was meeting to determine whether Trump should be charged with an alleged silence money scheme for porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. .