He also argued that the government set him up for the fraud, but this was denied by a Los Angeles attorney spokesman named Them Mrozek. On March 1, 2004, Bartiromo plead guilty to not only the bank fraud charge but also mail and wire fraud for his eBay scam, which he admitted to doing during his plead. At the time, having these two charges guarheened a maximum federal prison sentence of 35 years; however, judge John F. Walter, when sentencing Bartiromo at the United States District Court for the Central District of California on June 14, reduced the penalty to 33 months of jail time and $20,000 restitution based on Bartiromo's denouncements of his claims that the government tried to frame him and his father's request for leniency. He did time at Kern County starting July 5, 2004. He was still under probation, meaning he was not allowed to use the internet, after his sentence was finished until 2010. From November 2009 to late July 2010, he was incarcerated for using a cellphone in a hallway house. He completed his required service in the halfway house in September 2010. By December 2010, Bartiromo was living with his family unemployed and poor, his 2005 $1.2 million penalty rose to $2.7 million due to interest, and he was also taxed $1.1 million by the IRS for IB2001. In September 2009, he was interviewed on a season three episode of the show "MoneyTrack" about his online scams, titled "Lessons From a High School Scam Artist." From the 2000s decade to 2010, Bartiromo spoke in various interviews and criminal testimonies about turning his life around, aspiring to write a movie, a book, and rap songs about his life, own the Seattle Mariners, and work as an entrepreneur. Reflecting on the scams, he opined that while he regretted the online crimes he committed, his victims were partially at fault: "If you decide to invest, you're taking a risk, you're making a gamble, so hopefully you put in your research." Bartiromo had a brief stint in 2010 performing public speaking events about the consequences of the schemes he committed at schools such as UC Berkeley in the summer and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in December. This events showed his first presentation of his brand known as "The Dollar Scholar". In 2013, Bartiromo began Newsball, a blog that was initially meant to present his social media pranks; on Facebook, he created fake profiles of notorious people being covered by popular news sources, including Jared Lee Loughner and James DiMaggio.