The family moved to the Bronx when Riesel was 13 years old. Academically gifted, Victor Riesel graduated from Morris High School at the age of 15. While in high school, Riesel began typing stories about the American labor movement and sending them to English language newspapers around the world, charging $1 for publication rights. He typed the same story over and over (sometimes as many as 15 times) to make it look like an original (his goal being to sell the same story to many newspapers rather than many stories to a single newspaper), and earned a significant income from this work.