National Enquirer sold to indicted former MoviePass CEO in $100m deal: report

The scandal-ridden tabloid National Enquirer, which engaged in “catch-and-kill” practices to bury stories about Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, has been sold to a mogul with his own checkered past.

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

Farnsworth, who was criminally charged with securities fraud last November, said the deal for the Enquirer and the other titles was worth about $100 million, according to the New York Times.

The Enquirer was reportedly on the market for about four years before Farnsworth picked it up as part of a new company — VVIP Ventures — formed by Vinco Ventures and Farnsworth-founded Icon Publishing. Vinco owns Lomotif, which it describes as a TikTok competitor.

The sale to Farnsworth comes after he and others were accused of misleading investors about MoviePass, the once hot movie ticket startup. A spokesman for Farnsworth said his attorneys would appeal against the charges, according to CNBC.

The Post reached out to Farnsworth for comment on the Enquirer deal and its fraud case.

The National Enquirer got into its own legal chaos in 2018 for using “catch-and-kill” tactics, in which the tabloid allegedly paid for stories about Donald Trump and never published them. The move should help Trump win the presidency.

Federal prosecutors agreed not to prosecute the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media, over the $150,000 hush money payment the tabloid paid to Karen McDougal, the Playboy model who claims she was having an affair with Trump . The company then deliberately suppressed McDougal’s story until after the election was over.

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

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

In August 2020, American Media CEO David Pecker resigned from the company, which was acquired by a360, a logistics company based in Smyrna, Georgia.

The deal to sell the Enquirer comes a week after Pecker and his attorney were spotted entering a Manhattan courthouse where a grand jury was convening to decide whether Trump should be indicted over an alleged plan to indict porn star Stormy Daniels 2016 elections to pay hush money.