David Bloom — a twice-convicted con man known as the “Wall Street Whiz Kid” — pleaded no contest Tuesday to multiple counts of grand theft and securities fraud in Los Angeles.
Bloom spent years using a historic Hollywood apartment complex and a near century-old L.A. bar to find new marks on the West Coast, authorities said, using the trappings of luxury to fool people into giving him money.
Bloom, 62, pleaded no contest on Tuesday to 18 counts of grand theft by deception and securities fraud. The Manhattan-born swindler is expected to be sentenced to a decade in prison at a June hearing.
Bloom’s case had been set for trial in April, nearly three years after prosecutors first brought charges in 2023, but medical complications delayed the proceedings after only one witness took the stand. After a week-long pause in the case, Bloom returned to court to wave a white flag Tuesday afternoon.
A 2022 Times investigation detailed how Bloom ingratiated himself with regulars at the Frolic Room bar and residents of the Villa Carlotta apartment complex in Hollywood by projecting an aura of wealth and status. He promised people he could get their screenplays to Netflix or set them up with Super Bowl tickets, namedropping billionaires to convince his neighbors and fellow bar patrons he could connect them to anyone or anything.
He claimed he had early access to sell shares of popular companies that were about to go public — including Instacart, SoHo House and Snapchat. At least a dozen people forked over approximately $190,000 to Bloom in 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department previously told The Times.
The Los Angeles County public defender’s office, which was representing Bloom, declined to comment.
“David Bloom didn’t just lie, he stole from people who trusted him, while he treated their livelihoods as his own personal bankroll,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said in a statement. “Today’s no contest plea makes clear that those who exploit others for personal gain will face serious consequences.”
Hochman said in total, Bloom’s scam grossed approximately $250,000.
As months went by and most of Bloom’s targets saw no return on their initial investment, they started to ask questions and look into his past. It wasn’t long before they found Bloom had been convicted of similar behavior before.
New York tabloids dubbed Bloom the “Wall Street Whiz Kid” in the 1980s after he was charged in federal court with bilking nearly 140 people, including his own grandmother, out of a combined $15 million.
Born on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Bloom came from money and presented himself to his parents’ wealthy associates as the head of an investment group he founded at Duke University. The purported investment group claimed its clientele included Bill Cosby and members of the Rockefeller family, according to published reports.
But Bloom never invested his clients’ funds, instead using the money to buy million-dollar paintings, a New York City condo, a Long Island beach house and an Aston Martin. He pleaded guilty to mail and securities fraud in 1987 and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. He was also barred from taking part in the securities industry for life.
In 2000, he pleaded guilty to larceny and violations of business law after running similar scams on Manhattan restaurant employees, according to New York prosecutors.
In Los Angeles, Bloom was first arrested in August 2022 after residents of the Villa Carlotta confronted him at his apartment about their lost investments. But prosecutors took nearly a year to file charges, and in that time, Bloom struck again.
During his opening statement last month, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Przelomiec said Bloom approached a man in a Culver City bar in September 2022, just one month after his arrest on fraud charges, and began to tell him about an investment opportunity in an Israeli technology company. As the two talked more, Bloom learned the man’s wife suffered from a serious heart condition and claimed he knew the head of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
While convincing the man to buy $7,500 worth of stock in the tech company, Bloom also promised the man he could help his wife get a “second opinion” from the Cedars-Sinai doctor who he did not actually know, Przelomeic said.
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