Brian Krassenstein and Ed Krassenstein are American twin brothers who are writers, entrepreneurs, and social media personalities. They reside in Fort Myers, Florida, and graduated from Rutgers University in 2004 with degrees in economics. They gained fame during the presidency of Donald Trump by replying to Trump's Twitter account very often. The Krassensteins were suspended from Twitter in 2019 for allegedly operating fake accounts. They denied these allegations. In December 2022, their accounts were reinstated.
Early life
The Krassensteins were born and raised in a Jewish household in Somers Point, New Jersey. They graduated from Mainland Regional High School in 2000. According to Brian, they launched their first business at the age of 15, selling baseball cards on the internet, before moving onto running Internet forums in the early 2000s. In college, they started a business running online communities addressing topics such as video games, automobiles, and investing.
Business ventures
Investing forums
Beginning in 2003 or earlier, the Krassensteins began operating web forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. In August 2017, Homeland Security Special Agent Michael Adams of the United States Department of Justice alleged that these websites were devoted to the promotion of high-yield investment programs (HYIPs). The brothers wrote on Web-Life, one of their sites, that they ran "the ONLY safelist for HYIP".
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) raided the Krassenstein brothers' homes and web site operations in 2017, pulling TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup offline on or around August 22. In a civil asset forfeiture complaint, the DOJ accused the Krassensteins of obtaining property that was considered to be "traceable to proceeds of wire fraud." Investigators temporarily seized their phones and internet devices, and later seized their homes, a rental property and other investments. Adams claimed that the Krassensteins were paid huge sums of money by individuals engaged in illegal activities, and that they knew that the funds had been criminally derived. Ed Krassenstein denied any wrongdoing and said that he and his brother only sold advertising space to companies that they did not know to be fraudulent. He told The Daily Beast that he and his brother were not promoting anything and that the purpose of their websites was "to help people find out which online business opportunities were legitimate and which were not."
The brothers were never arrested or charged with a crime. The federal investigators later explained that the Krassensteins' websites allowed for the publication of ads for companies that were scams, and that a criminal organization from Russia was allegedly behind the ads. The DOJ investigated whether the brothers were actively involved in what the department described as Ponzi schemes.
The Krassensteins settled their case with the federal government. They consented to asset forfeiture of about $450,000 from the sale of a rental property. On their own Independent Reporter web site, the Krassensteins wrote that the U.S. government had offered them a settlement that would have compelled them to testify against members of an "international organized crime syndicate". They rejected that deal out of concerns for their own safety.
3DPrint.com
The Krassensteins co-founded 3DPrint.com, a 3D printing and additive manufacturing resource, together in December 2013. In October 2014, the business received an equity investment from Sagamore LLC, and in September 2015, the Krassensteins sold the business to MecklerMedia in conjunction with New York based Sagamore III LLC. The sale included a 25% equity stake in another website the brothers ran, 3DPrintBoard. The Krassensteins remained involved with 3DPrint as the directors of ad sales after the site was acquired.
Hill Reporter
In 2018, the Krassensteins, along with James Kosur, co-founded Hill Reporter, an online political news portal. They sold the website to Roman Romanuk, an ad tech businessman, in 2019.
NFTz
In August 2021, the Krassensteins, along with Martijn van Halen, Wouter van Halen, and Bas van Halen, co-founded NFTz.me, an NFT marketplace and community built on the DeSo blockchain. NFTz received funding from the DeSo Foundation's Octane Fund.
The Krassensteins purchased the first NFT created by Tiffany Trump, Donald's daughter. She then bought an NFT that the brothers created.