Hunterbrook Media’s investment affiliate, Hunterbrook Capital, does not have any positions related to this article at the time of publication. Positions may change at any time. Full disclosures below.
Papa Johns International ($PZZA) stock surged more than 18% on November 10 after false reports that the company had received an acquisition offer from a private equity firm. The fake news was spread by several websites that appear to be run by U.K. nationals based in Dubai that offer “pay-to-play” placements of articles across their network of outlets, according to Hunterbrook Media’s forensic analysis.
Here’s what we know so far.
The earliest version of the acquisition rumor identified by Hunterbrook appeared on BusinessMole, crediting a post on NewsReleases.co.uk, a feed that openly solicits businesses to “get featured” by emailing advertise@newsreleases.co.uk.
The BusinessMole article was posted on its website at 8:26 a.m. Eastern time — about an hour before markets opened in the U.S. — under the profile “Newsteam PR.” A reverse image search of the profile photo leads to Sam Allcock, an author across several news sites and blogs.
Allcock describes himself as a “digital marketing innovator” on his own website.
A PimEyes facial recognition search of the “Newsteam PR” profile photo suggests that this is indeed the same Sam Allcock as seen on BusinessMole.
BusinessMole appears to be the first outlet that published the Papa Johns takeover news. Other sites and blogs followed.
Hunterbrook was able to confirm that Sam Allock sent the Papa Johns press release to another website, using an email address that is listed on his personal site.
Allcock did not respond to a request for comment.
Later on November 10, the article also appeared on ABC Money, a U.K.-based website that publishes posts on finance and is not related to ABC News, despite using an almost identical logo and branding. The article was posted by “Danielle” at 10:30 a.m. Eastern, about two hours after the article on BusinessMole went live.
This story was picked up by several finance news outlets, as journalists may have mistaken the website for ABC News. Papa Johns stock surged in the hour after the ABC Money article was posted.
The first name “Danielle” also appears on ABC Money’s “Print Magazine Edition” — its “Editor-in-cheif” (sic) is Danielle Trigg.
While Allcock’s name does not currently appear on ABC Money’s “writing team,” he is named as the author of five articles and is one of only a few writers credited on its online content. An archived version of the website shows that Allcock was listed as an author in 2022.
And on Facebook, Allcock is listed as one of ABC Money’s public followers.
Allcock and Trigg appear to know each other. They run an outlet called CryptoNexa together.
And they follow each other on Instagram. A recent Instagram Story on Trigg’s account suggests that she is currently in Dubai with Allcock, who lives there. The post appears to show Allcock’s Aston Martin. Allcock appears to operate out of Dubai’s Media City, an Emirate-established free trade zone launched in 2001 to attract global and regional media companies by offering 100% foreign ownership, tax exemptions, and advanced infrastructure.
Allcock was the director of PR Fire until March 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile. His Quora account credits him as the company’s founder. The company was renamed Fresh Links and Media in 2024, according to a U.K. company register. Allcock’s LinkedIn says he is the company’s owner.
Trigg’s LinkedIn profile says that she still works there as a digital marketing and SEO account manager.
British news magazine The New Statesman looked into the company in 2023, when a Statesman reporter received a PR Fire email offering “guaranteed placement of stories on a number of websites.” When the reporter reached out posing as a prospective advertiser, “one of PR Fire’s directors” assured him that the content he submitted would “run unedited and ‘not marked as sponsored or ad.’”
A PR Fire employee apparently also described how the “paid-for articles” would be picked up by news aggregators, with “‘guaranteed syndication to Google News, MarketWatch, Reuters, DowJones & LexisNexis.’”
According to the reporter, when asked for comment, Sam Allcock replied, “‘We submit press releases to these publications just like any other PR agency would and they are subject to editorial approval,’ and that ‘the final decision on whether it gets published lies with the owner of the publication.’”
But domain registrations show that Allcock actually owned the URL of NewsAnyway, one of the partner sites PR Fire worked with, and was an author for several others, according to The New Statesman’s sister publication Press Gazette, a journalism industry news site.
Among the other sites PR Fire worked with for distribution, according to the Press Gazette article? ABC Money – as well as Cryptonexa and Law News, another site founded by Allcock.
It is unclear whether Allcock and Trigg wrote the fake news articles about the Papa Johns acquisition offer themselves or whether they recirculated a press release by a third party.
Trigg’s bylines across a variety of online sources would suggest an impossibly prolific writer. An unverified MuckRack account in her name lists over 3,640 articles, including ten since yesterday morning.
Her alleged coverage is also incredibly broad. Trigg’s credits in the past day alone range from an elite British private school expanding into Dubai, how to play in esports tournaments, a hydrocarbon discovery in the Dominican Republic, and a flattering profile of an Estonian businessman on the board of an early stage biotech company focused on opioid abuse-deterrent drug delivery.
Trigg did not respond to either an emailed request for comment or a LinkedIn message from a Hunterbrook reporter asking if she wrote the ABC Money story on Papa Johns.
NewsReleases, which BusinessMole cited in its story early Monday morning, is also tied to Allcock. The NewsReleases website sits on the same U.K. hosting server as SamAllcock.com — Allcock’s personal website — according to Hunterbrook’s review of public IP records.
Only four other low-traffic news and content sites share that server — AbuDhabiWeek.ae, WebRise.co.uk, City-Futures.org.uk, and ColemanNews.com — a small grouping that resembles a linked SEO content network, where multiple domains are used to distribute and cross-promote similar promotional material. Allcock appears to be a regular contributor to Abu Dhabi Week and is listed as an author on a story published this week. He has also written for CityFutures and appears as an alias for ColemanNews on Crunchbase.
It is unclear whether others were involved in the creation or distribution of the erroneous Papa Johns story. But ABC Money shares its hosting server with only one other domain — SteveLaidlaw.com — according to Hunterbrook’s review. That site is the personal domain of Steve Laidlaw, a Dubai-based internet entrepreneur who, by his own account, began acquiring domain names in the late 1990s and gradually built a network of revenue-generating sites.
His premier venture, Digital24, is described as a global press-release syndication offering guaranteed placement for businesses across outlets such as Yahoo Finance and Google News, both of which featured the $PZZA story.
Allcock, in particular, has written about Laidlaw previously, including a complimentary review as recently as August. And the two co-posted on Instagram just a few days ago with an executive from Laidlaw’s advertising agency.
Laidlaw, like Allcock, has also written for ABC Money, having penned his last story in April.
Laidlaw did not respond to a request for comment.
ABC Money appears to have been launched in July 2015 under the name “ABCnews” — a title quite similar to that of the entirely separate and well-established ABC News network in the U.S.
Since then, the outlet has published a boatload of stories, churning out more than 2,700 articles this year alone.
How expensive is it to place an article like the Papa Johns acquisition rumor? A PR website is offering a feature story on ABC Money for $180. This Fiverr account — with an “exceptional number of repeat buyers,” according to the freelance services marketplace — is offering to “publish news” on ABC Money for $150 and fees.
Such an investment into market moving media coverage could prove profitable with a few well-timed trades. In a best-case scenario, a savvy trader could have multiplied their initial investment if they bought Papa Johns call options on Friday and sold them during the peak on Monday after the articles came out.
“If you’ve found evidence of how easily such tactics can have financial implications and that too at scale, the issue can’t be limited to a nefarious actor making a quick buck. This could spiral very well from fraud to security related issues or even impact politics,” said Damien Symon, an open source intelligence expert, when Hunterbrook shared its findings with him. “An effort like this focused for example at an airport could spark panic among fliers.”
The $PZZA story saw wide syndication by reputable news sites. Barron’s wrote about the Papa Johns takeover offer citing ABC Money and later corrected its article. The acquisition rumors were also featured on the Papa Johns page on the Bloomberg Terminal for several hours yesterday, as well as appearing repeatedly in the main News Headlines.
Papa Johns stock fell as much as 8% on November 10 amid corrections, before ending the day down 4%, up slightly since the fake acquisition offer announcement.
Authors
Till Daldrup joined Hunterbrook from The Wall Street Journal, where he focused on open-source investigations and content verification. In 2023, he was part of a team of reporters who won a Gerald Loeb Award for an investigation that revealed how Russia is stealing grain from occupied parts of Ukraine. He has an M.A. in Journalism from New York University and a B.S. in Social Sciences from University of Cologne. He’s also an alum of the Cologne School of Journalism (Kölner Journalistenschule). Till is based in New York.
Dhruv Patel is an investigative journalist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializing in data-driven reporting. He helps spearhead investigative coverage at The Harvard Crimson, and his reporting has been cited and discussed by The New York Times, CNN, The Boston Globe, ABC News, and BBC, where he also frequently contributes commentary. A John Harvard Scholar at Harvard College, he studies computer science and economics to leverage machine learning for accountability journalism.
Blake Spendley joined Hunterbrook from the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), where he led investigations as a Research Specialist for the Marine Corps and US Navy. He built and owns the leading open-source intelligence (OSINT) account on X/Twitter, called @OSINTTechnical (over 1 million followers), which also distributes Hunterbrook Media reporting. His OSINT research has been published in Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, among other top business outlets. He has a BA in Political Science from USC.
Laura Wadsten is an investigative journalist specializing in healthcare. She began her career reporting on antitrust and health care markets as a Correspondent for The Capitol Forum, a premium subscription financial publication. Previously, she was Executive Director of the nonprofit Moving to Value Alliance, where she produced the MTVA Unscripted Podcast. Laura was a Hodson Scholar and Editor-in-Chief of The News-Letter at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned a B.A. in Medicine, Science & the Humanities.
Editors
Sam Koppelman is a New York Times best-selling author who has written books with former United States Attorney General Eric Holder and former United States Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal. Sam has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Time Magazine, and other outlets — and occasionally volunteers on a fire speech for a good cause. He has a BA in Government from Harvard, where he was named a John Harvard Scholar (taking much easier classes than Dhruv!) and wrote op-eds like “Shut Down Harvard Football,” which he tells us were great for his social life. Sam is based in New York.
Hunterbrook Media publishes investigative and global reporting — with no ads or paywalls. When articles do not include Material Non-Public Information (MNPI), or “insider info,” they may be provided to our affiliate Hunterbrook Capital, an investment firm which may take financial positions based on our reporting. Subscribe here. Learn more here.
Please email ideas@hntrbrk.com to share ideas, talent@hntrbrk.com for work, or press@hntrbrk.com for media inquiries.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER
© 2025 by Hunterbrook Media LLC. When using this website, you acknowledge and accept that such usage is solely at your own discretion and risk. Hunterbrook Media LLC, along with any associated entities, shall not be held responsible for any direct or indirect damages resulting from the use of information provided in any Hunterbrook publications. It is crucial for you to conduct your own research and seek advice from qualified financial, legal, and tax professionals before making any investment decisions based on information obtained from Hunterbrook Media LLC. The content provided by Hunterbrook Media LLC does not constitute an offer to sell, nor a solicitation of an offer to purchase any securities. Furthermore, no securities shall be offered or sold in any jurisdiction where such activities would be contrary to the local securities laws.
Hunterbrook Media LLC is not a registered investment advisor in the United States or any other jurisdiction. We strive to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information provided, drawing on sources believed to be trustworthy. Nevertheless, this information is provided "as is" without any guarantee of accuracy, timeliness, completeness, or usefulness for any particular purpose. Hunterbrook Media LLC does not guarantee the results obtained from the use of this information. All information presented are opinions based on our analyses and are subject to change without notice, and there is no commitment from Hunterbrook Media LLC to revise or update any information or opinions contained in any report or publication contained on this website. The above content, including all information and opinions presented, is intended solely for educational and information purposes only. Hunterbrook Media LLC authorizes the redistribution of these materials, in whole or in part, provided that such redistribution is for non-commercial, informational purposes only. Redistribution must include this notice and must not alter the materials. Any commercial use, alteration, or other forms of misuse of these materials are strictly prohibited without the express written approval of Hunterbrook Media LLC. Unauthorized use, alteration, or misuse of these materials may result in legal action to enforce our rights, including but not limited to seeking injunctive relief, damages, and any other remedies available under the law.