💰 Grifter Brian and Ed Krassenstein / The Krassenstein Brothers / KrassenCast / edbri871 / JamesOkeef / Talkgoldcom - Twitter's premier soy boy Democrat influencer twins. Serial grifters with a 25+-year-long history of Ponzi schemes and other financial crimes.

Early Life and Financial History



Brian Mark and Edward Lawrence “Ed” Krassenstein were born on November 2nd, 1981 to parents Martin and Carol Krassenstein. They were raised in a Jewish household in Somers Point, New Jersey and started get-rich-quick schemes as early as 15 when they started selling baseball cards and video games on newsgroups. The brothers graduated from Mainland Regional High School in 2000 and around a year later started their first Ponzi scheme via a website called EBKcards. Via this site, they claim that you can get expensive products for free as long as you send three bucks to their PayPal to obtain a how-to guide.



They soon opened their second venture, Smiley Hosting, a fake reseller hosting site.



Around 2003, the brothers founded TalkGold, a forum which they claimed fostered discussion on how to earn money and make a living.



Testimony from a former mod named “los” claimed that TalkGold was a “criminal enterprise” and they constantly had to ban scammers hosting high-yield investment programs (or HYIPs, often a type of Ponzi scheme). This testimony was highlighted in an interview with Brian, who suspiciously banned “los” from TalkGold.



Brian (who should be noted appears to be the “brains” of the two) denied ever running any HYIPs in the interview.



In 2004, the brothers graduated from Rutgers University with degrees in economics (who could have guessed?). It was also around this time when they launched MoneyMakerGroup, which effectively served the same purpose as TalkGold.



MMG had a history of hosting Ponzi schemes as detailed by a back-and-forth between Brian and a woman on Twitter in 2018.


Forum posts on Digital Point from 2008 appear to indicate that the brothers (specifically Brian) participated in stealing domain names from GoDaddy, with the posters having nothing positive to say.


One of the brothers also showed up in this thread defending himself, and claimed TalkGold never had anything to do with HYIPs.


Court filings reveal that in 2015, Brian evicted a tenant of his with children because he complained the home’s AC was broken during the hot Florida summer. Brian took the $4,000 he promised to spend on fixing the AC on a honeymoon and told the tenant to deal with it.

Text:

Response for Eviction

I moved into my condo on April 01, 2015. Almost immediately I noticed issue with the air conditioning unit. When I told the plaintiff, he responded that its been that way for years and that I just have to keep defrosting it. After numerous attempts to have him fix it he finally agrees to have someone look at it. When he was to do(?) it was going to cost $4000.00, he ask me just to deal with it for as long as I could because he didn't wanna spend his money because of a honeymoon. My A/C would freeze up after 20 minutes, then take hour to thaw which in summer caused house to be 85-90 degrees. My childrens room was even hotter causing them to sleep on couch. It has also cost me and extra $50 a month in power bill because only way to keep it from freezing up is to keep fan on 24 hours a day. I would of gladly paid rent if he would have fixed air condition. House was uncontrollably hot. And the bills got to high to pay. Asking for more time​

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In 2016, the brothers were raided by the DHS and ICE, who issued search warrants and seized dozens of devices from their home and another nearby property owned by one of the brothers. The people they were visited by specialized in financial crimes. Ultimately, neither of them were charged with anything.



In 2018, the brothers received an Encyclopedia Dramatica page (A, which was instrumental in the creation of this thread) and on July 26th an account called “Talkgoldcom” joined and tried to blank it out. The account’s user page (A, NSFL) that was totally not one of the brothers was bombed with gore and porn in response.


Politics

After Trump won the 2016 election, the brothers started becoming politically active on Twitter. Aside from being frequent reply guys to Trump, Elon, and other conservative figures, they also create tweets that are very obviously bait. With just one example being spewing out facts about Hitler that are obviously comparisons to Trump while claiming they aren't.



They also have a propensity to delete tweets that gain significant backlash or look very suspicious.


In 2017, the brothers launched a KickStarter (A) for a children’s book called, “How The People Trumped Ronald Plump.”



It contains very poor caricatures of political figures with names that aren’t subtle in the least.


The KickStarter failed but the book was eventually released a year later. The book has many positive reviews, but the negative ones are scathing.




Around 2018, the brothers lost their Twitter verification status and coped by putting diamond and dolphin emojis in the checkmarks' place.



In 2019 the brothers got banned from Twitter for “operating multiple fake accounts” and “purchasing account interactions.” They were unbanned once Elon took over.

On January 6th, 2024, the brothers participated in a ZeroHedge-hosted live debate about the Capitol attack alongside Destiny against Alex Jones, Glenn Greenwald, and Darren Beattie.


On August 27th, 2024, Twitter user Dr. Simon Goddek created a thread (A) revealing that back in 2007 the brothers bought and posted teen porn domains.


As well as other porn domains.


He also pointed out that the “871” in their common username “edbri871” is a code among the gay community for rendezvous points.



Brian later cried in a Twitter space about not being able to get the thread taken down.



On the 29th, Simon created another thread (A), revealing that Brian DM’d him a Cease and Desist notice for his previous one, saying the claims made against him and Ed were defamatory.



In this thread, Simon detailed many of the financial crimes discussed previously, as well as other malicious activities that haven’t been. These include the “Becky tweet,” a deleted tweet from Brian in which he threatened to blackmail a DNC member named Becky and Simon created a video exploring the context and breaking down the narrative Brian used to justify making the tweet. Simon said that he received emails from two large accounts who said that they were also blackmailed by the brothers.




Simon also revealed that the brothers used clickbait Facebook pages to farm followers and monetize them, with one example being the 2010 Haiti earthquake. He also shows proof that they bought real Twitter and Facebook accounts in the past despite them denying it.



Two of these accounts were Justin Bieber and Jonas Brothers Twitter fan accounts, @bieberfanclubs and @JONASBROTHER5, which eventually got rebranded to their main accounts, the former being Ed’s and the latter being Brian’s.



On May 16th, 2025, Ed was visited by the Secret Service for posting “8647” to Twitter, which they saw as a symbol calling for Trump’s assassination. Brian also posted it, but he never received a visit.




On September 6th, 2025, Brian called out JD Vance for committing war crimes by killing cartel members. Vance replied back, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” This made multiple news headlines.



What's happening with them now, you may ask? Well, raped by Grok for one.



Brian has also been trying to help the Somali daycare owners in Minnesota, claiming that Nick Shirley's reporting was fake and defamatory.



But as always...



Socials

Brian:
Twitter/X (A)
Facebook (A)
Instagram (A)
Instagram #2 (A)
Reddit (A)
Website (A)

Ed:
Twitter/X (A)
Facebook (A)
Instagram (A)
Reddit (A)
Website (A)

Shared:
Facebook (A)
Instagram (A)
TikTok (A)
Threads (A)
Bluesky (A)
Personal YouTube (A)
Podcast YouTube (A)
Substack (A)
DeSo (A)
Various accounts on different forums