Joshua B. Newman, the fitness, entrepreneur guru, with the incredible knack for ostentatious self-promotion now finds himself as a felon on fraud charges.
Newman, 36, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Newark to one count of wire fraud in a scheme that authorities said lured at least 30 investors out of approximately $3.1 million dollars.
The guilty plea represents a stark contradiction to the character that Newman had portrayed of himself. Newman regarded himself as a successful investor, film producer and promoter of several CrossFit training centers in the metropolitan New York area.
But Mr. Newman’s career, which he started while he was still a student at Yale, was marked by a large list of debts and unpaid money to friends.
Newman’s personal website still highlights quotations from a number of publications that have written admirable of him however, the website also mentions a new online fitness training program that he recently began, even as he was trying to negotiate a deal for his fraud.
Prosecutors who work for Paul Fishman, the United States attorney for New Jersey, said Mr. Newman’s financial troubles began after a start-up film production company he ran, Cyan Pictures, took a nose dive in 2011. Authorities stated that in 2012, Newman began frauding investors to invest money for various business ventures, including several CrossFit training facilities.
Stan Frenkel