Shark Tank: How DealMaker Uses Morning Brew and Robinhood...

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Shark Tank: How DealMaker Uses Morning Brew and Robinhood to Lure Retail Investors Into Predatory Waters

Graphic by Dan DeLorenzo

March 1, 2026 12:30 PM<br>EST

BY:

Jeremy Arnold

EDITOR:

Jim Impoco<br>Sam Koppelman

Hunterbrook Media’s investment affiliate, Hunterbrook Capital, has no positions related to this article at the time of publication. Positions may change at any time. Our contributor has made extensive filings with the SEC and FINRA for potential securities fraud and anti-touting violations. If you’re an affected investor or former employee of any of these companies and want to tell us about it, write ideas@hntrbrk.com.

In 2012, Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission passed a law that would open the doors to equity crowdfunding.1   For the first time, buying shares in private startups wasn’t just for the wealthy and financially sophisticated. Restrictions designed to protect amateur investors were relaxed as part of a mission to “democratize” finance. No longer would ordinary people be forced to watch from the sidelines as the next SpaceX or Instagram rocketed to the moon.<br>Or so the sales pitches went. What actually followed was exactly what skeptics predicted: a parade of failing companies raising hundreds of millions from unsuspecting investors through campaigns built on misdirection and deceit. Success stories proved rare. Disasters became routine.<br>A Hunterbrook Media investigation reveals how a network of distressed startups, a hungry marketing firm, and some of America’s most trusted financial media brands — wittingly or not — ended up separating small investors from their money. A remarkable number of respected outlets, from blue-chip financial newsletters to The Wall Street Journal, appear to have hosted misleading or downright false ads, calling into question their due diligence and adherence to disclosure obligations. The result looks like an unhappy masquerade: troubled companies partnering with slick marketers to hide their rotten balance sheets behind the prestige of reputable mastheads, and news outlets indirectly promoting the very companies they should have been scrutinizing.<br>The little guy finally had his seat at the table. The game was rigged.<br>By following the trail from the narrative factory to the newsletter inbox, a clear pattern emerges of how these companies manufactured the appearance of success to mask the reality of failure.<br>Here’s how it worked:<br>Manufacturing the pitch. DealMaker Marketing Services2  , an arm of financial firm DealMaker, collected fat fees for helping early-stage companies — including Boxabl, HeartSciences, EnergyX, M2i Global, Pacaso, RAD Intel, and Miso Robotics — craft ads and landing pages that stretched the truth, sometimes beyond the breaking point.<br>‘Trust-washing’ These ads appeared in premium slots in newsletters with millions of subscribers — like Morning Brew, Robinhood’s Sherwood News, and The Wall Street Journal’s 10-Point.<br>Last ones in the pool. While readers were frequently told that they’d be investing alongside venture capital firms and other financial professionals, these companies largely turned to retail investors after deteriorating circumstances forced their hands. The amateurs essentially bailed out the pros, buying heavily-restricted shares at jaw-dropping and opaque valuations.<br>While we’re publishing now to call attention to the scale of the problem, we believe we’ve captured here only a fraction of all concerning cases. In our review of additional examples, we struggled to find any that didn’t exhibit similar concerns.

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Pay-to-Print Coverage<br>Hunterbrook approached all eight media outlets named here for comment. Only two replied. Their statements are included below.<br>Intermediaries like DealMaker didn’t — and couldn’t — pull this off alone. Instagram ads and landing pages can only go so far. Media legitimization is crucial.<br>Say you’re reading your morning newsletter from a trusted source. There’s a section titled “Presented By” that otherwise looks the same as the rest. Is this an ad? Who wrote it? At the least you might assume that the outlet in question did meaningful due diligence on your behalf — as some of them claim to do.

(Example from 1440’s standards page.)Few outlets count on this simple trust more than Morning Brew. A hotshot daily newsletter network with over 4 million claimed subscribers, its rapid rise led to an acquisition by publishing giant Axel Springer, parent company of both Politico and Business Insider. Hunterbrook’s analysis found that Morning Brew ran these crowdfunding ads in 165 editions of their flagship newsletter in 2025 alone.3  It also continued to run them regularly even after we approached for comment — to which we still have yet...