Legacy media outlets get a lot of criticism these days, both fair and unfounded. Few that have stood the test of time did so with spotless records of journalistic integrity and may be coasting on their past laurels these days, but who among us is perfect? Then you’ve got cases like Forbes, where a once serious outlet has strayed so far from its original mission and become such an entirely different beast in recent years that you might start to forget that—before private equity got involved—they once were (and occasionally still are) breaking real news.
From a crash-forecasting “STOCKS TOO HIGH!” headline in May of 1929 to its exposure of The New Republic’s serial fabulist journo Stephen Glass to unveiling Peter Thiel as the funder of Hulk Hogan’s Gawker suit in 2016, Forbes has been publishing important pieces throughout its 108-year history. It’s just a shame that the few reporters still staffed today have to battle against the stigma of the site’s pay-to-play “contributor” section and the myriad lists of powerful scions and scrappy up-and-comers the company is now most associated with.
Much like a college degree, inclusion on one of these lists has gradually shifted from hard-won achievement to perfunctory first step along the way to a larger goal. Introduced in 2011, Forbes’s 30 Under 30 was once a humble annual list of 30 upstarts to watch and has since expanded to regional lists for other continents and now boasts over 100,000 total nominations. Perhaps due to a so-called “curse,” but more likely due to the list tending to focus on Silicon Valley and its “disruptors,” a trend began to emerge in Forbes’ picks that was eventually dubbed the “Forbes-to-fraud” prison pipeline. Yes, some of our most notorious fraudster entrepreneurs like Martin Shkreli, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Elizabeth Holmes were once puffed up in the pages of Forbes, and the trend seems to only be getting more common. As a 2024 Airmail article put it, “few things are as reliable in prophesying a fall from grace as 30 Under 30.”
A new entry to this growing hall of shame comes to us from New York, where the Australian founder of fake chicken nugget startup Simulate (and 2021 30 Under 30 nominee) Ben Pasternak was arrested and is facing assault charges for allegedly strangling his (now ex) girlfriend, YouTuber Evelyn Ha, on the night the couple broke up. Fans of Ha, who has since posted that she is “safe and ok now,” soon surfaced old photos of the beauty influencer with scars on her face.
These charges come mere days after Pasternak was accused in court of running cryptocurrency scams through his social media app, Believe. Yes, Believe. Like so many of his ilk, Pasternak is also facing civil allegations after a class action lawsuit filed on March 23rd accused him of a classic pump-and-dump scheme. The suit alleges he took millions of dollars from investors for Solana-based launch tokens $BELIEVE, $LAUNCHCOIN, and $PASTERNAK before pulling the rug.
“Pasternak ran the same play three times, under three different token names: generate excitement, bring consumers in, collect fees, and let the token collapse,” the complaint claims. “Each time, he and his entities profited on every transaction, including the sell-offs that wiped out consumers.”
Pasternak was arrested, charged, and pleaded not guilty to both the strangulation and assault charges on April 21st, which was also the third day of Forbes’ 2026 30 Under 30 Summit in Phoenix, Arizona.
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