On September 22, a week after Lehman Brothers said it would file for bankruptcy, a rumor surfaced on DealBreaker about the company's CEO, Richard Fuld, who had yet to make a public statement. "Dick Fuld had audacity to use the Lehman gym [on Sunday] and got punched in the face," said the report, which the Website had received from a tipster. Was it true? "Highly unlikely," the Website said. Still, they published it, because why not? The rumor was a balm to the disgruntled Lehman workers who lost their jobs and savings when Lehman filed for bankruptcy. Anyway, it was just funny gossip.
But a few weeks later, the gossip became a news story, when Vicky Ward, a journalist for Vanity Fair and a CNBC commentator, brought it up during Fuld's hearing in front of Congress. "I hadn't meant to get into the whole punching thing," she said later, but she was incensed after another commentator said Fuld seemed "contrite."