NEW YORK >> An article in New York magazine about a high school student who had earned eight figures trading stocks was a hoax, a representative for the student said Monday night.

The article appeared in the magazine’s “Reasons to Love New York” issue. No. 12 on the list was: “Because a Stuyvesant senior made $72 million trading stocks on his lunch break.”

The student, Mohammed Islam, 17, told New York magazine that his net worth was in the “high eight figures.”

After its publication Sunday, the article spread around the world on social media.

But late Monday, The New York Observer published an interview in which Islam and a friend, Damir Tulemaganbetov, 19, admitted to making the whole thing up. The newspaper asked Islam if he had in fact made any money at all.

“No,” he replied.

Through a representative, Islam and Tulemaganbetov declined to comment.

“These are young kids who got excited by a reporter’s inquiry,” said Ronn Torossian, the representative. “At the end of the day these are teenagers who acted dumb.”

He added that the “fact-checking of a middle-class kid who lives in Elmhurst, Queens, could have been more stringent.”

A spokeswoman for New York magazine said only that the magazine was “looking into it further and will update accordingly.”

The New York magazine hoax comes amid a scandal involving Rolling Stone magazine, which had published an account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia in 2012, elements of which were subsequently cast into doubt by The Washington Post among others.

The New York magazine story, by Jessica Pressler, topped with a crisp portrait of Islam, had explained that he was known as “basically a genius” at school but gave few details on how precisely he had made so much money.

The story started to fall apart Monday when CNBC asked Islam and Tulemaganbetov, who was described in the article as the son of a Kazakh oligarch, to appear on one of its programs. As CNBC later reported online, the network canceled their appearance after the pre-interview.

On Monday afternoon, New York magazine issued an editors’ note that said, “Mohammed provided bank statements that showed he is worth eight figures, and he confirmed on the record that he’s worth eight figures.”

On Monday night, Torossian said that, following legal advice, his clients would not comment on the bank statements that the magazine said it had been provided.

“That said,” he said, “my clients have advised that at no time was a reporter shown a bank statement of any sort.”

Pressler, who is leaving New York magazine to join Bloomberg News’ investigative unit, defended her story on Twitter on Monday morning, before The Observer interview was published.

“In any case,” she wrote, “it’s New York mag’s Reasons to Love issue, we’re not a financial publication.”

Pressler did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

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