Categories: OLD Media Moves

Penny Hoarder is suing The Smart Wallet parent

Florida-based personal finance site The Penny Hoarder is suing New York-based Fluent LLC, the parent of The Smart Wallet, for allegedly stealing story ideas and employees from the company.

Lauren Coffey of The Tampa Bay Business Journal writes, “Fluent LLC oversees The Smart Wallet website which, like The Penny Hoarder, is a personal financial website offering advice and tricks for those looking to better manage their money. Both have offices in St. Pete.

“‘In recent months Fluent has tried to bully and intimidate The Penny Hoarder by poaching employees, opening an office across the street, filing a frivolous lawsuit to stop us from protecting our confidential information and even encouraging one of their employees to breach our firewall and steal code,’ Penny Hoarder CEO Kyle Taylor said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Business Journal. ‘While we believe in working out business differences in the most amicable way possible, Fluent has left us no other choice but to file a lawsuit.'”

“The lawsuit was filed on May 15 in the Middle District of Florida Tampa division. The complaint lists 18 examples of times Fluent LLC allegedly copied The Penny Hoarder’s articles.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.