Lenny Dykstra Sold Access to Jim Cramer

Market 'genius' also took illegal bribe to tout penny stock
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 28, 2010 9:57 AM CDT
Lenny Dykstra Sold Access to Jim Cramer
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC Networks' "Mad Money" show is seen during an interview in front of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007 in New York.   (AP Photo/Edouard H.R. Gluck)

Lenny Dykstra, the fraudster Jim Cramer unwittingly turned into a stock-picking star, accepted an illegal bribe to pimp a penny stock on his TheStreet.com newsletter, Randall Lane of the Daily Beast reports. Dykstra secretly accepted $250,000 worth of Automated Vending Technologies shares in exchange for a plug in the newsletter and a promised meeting with Cramer, according to a former adviser to Dykstra, a retired baseball star.

Dykstra knew it was illegal, so he had the stock issued in his brother-in-law’s name, without, the adviser says, the brother-in-law’s knowledge. Dykstra never delivered on the meeting with Cramer—who almost certainly never knew about the scheme—but he did advise his readers to buy AVT. Lane confronted AVT’s founder with a certificate proving the stock handoff, but he denied everything, saying the only money he ever gave Dykstra was $15,000 to trade for him. That money has disappeared. (More Jim Cramer stories.)

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