Message Board Operator's Anti-'Basher' Website

In recent posts I've examined how managers of the "Investor Village" message board have suppressed questioning of Overstock.com execs who frequent the board. The New York Post and other media outlets have observed that IV's message board for NovaStar Financial has become infested by stock pumpers who have contributed to shareholder agony.

Remember that these are hands-on administrators who "closely monitor" their boards. So why have IV's managers, particularly its CEO and site administrator Ralph "Blue" Kidd, allowed the NovaStar board to become a stock-touting forum? Why have they allowed their Overstock.com board to become an extension of Overstock's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site, in blatant violation of their own policies?

Why was Kidd so anxious to kick out Sam Antar -- actually siccing his lawyer on the guy -- for asking sharp questions of Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and resident stalker Judd Bagley? (Why did he at one point delete all of the posts by Internet sleuth ScipioAfricanus challenging Bagley's and antisocialmedia.net's smears?

Why do Overstock critics avoid Investor Village? Why was it described by Byrne as a forum that "keeps corruption at bay" -- Byrnespeak for discouraging criticism of Patrick Byrne while allowing Byrne and others to smear and libel critics?

Why would IV openly align itself the smear-happy CEO of a foundering company, thereby opening itself up to lawsuits?

Well, bad me. The answers to at least some of the above questions were available all the time and I just noticed it.

Kidd, it appears, shares Byrne's disdain for stock "bashers" -- people who voice negative opinions about, or address pointed questions toward, execs of public companies.

He thinks "bashers" are so awful that last March he started an infantile website called basherjokes.com, devoted to ridiculing stock "bashers." Kidd is listed as the owner of the site.


Note that there is no "pumperjokes.com" Kidd owns that site name too, but has just "parked" the site name, while starting up the infantile "basher" site.

"Basher," of course, is stock-pumper-speak for what the rest of the world calls "skeptics." That is, people who -- often rightly -- feel that stocks are heading into the toilet. Had the thousands of elderly investors who follow NovaStar listened to these "bashers" that Kidd despises, they'd have saved millions of bucks.

Kidd thinks "bashers" are to be "ignored" and derided. ("Ignoring them is half the fun," says he.) Here's a sample of Kidd's anti-"bashing" website:

BASHERS GATHER FOR ARTSY PHOTO-SHOOT

CRACKASS, Venezuela - More than 15,000 Venezuelan stock bashers and naked short sellers scurried from their basement boiler rooms clad in nothing more than their typical work attire, comprised primarily of brown and yellow stained underwear and the occasional leather face mask with matching restraints (a few even paraded around in nothing but their birthday suits).

Funny!

Observe the reference to "naked short sellers." Another thing I hadn't noticed was that Kidd has promoted a wacky "stock counterfeiting" website, "thefaulkingtruth.com," in a post on the Investor Village website. Kidd urged his readers to "stay informed"by reading the wacko junk on the website.

Explains a lot, I think. Not everything.

UPDATE: This web post has some interesting observations about Kidd's involvement with a penny stock called Eagle Broadband.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

Overstock's Latest Smear

It didn't take long for Overstock.com's resident stalker, Judd Bagley (left), to crank up a smear about Susan Antilla, who wrote a Bloomberg column yesterday on Overstock's campaign of lies against critics and the media.

This one is typical of the tactics that Bagley and his boss Patrick Byrne deploy, in their campaign to keep people from writing about or criticizing their actions.

First Byrne tried to bully Antilla and Bloomberg by publishing her questions and his slippery, evasive responses on the Internet.

That failed, so they have now moved into the Smear phase of the strategy, in a post that Bagley published on the Investor Village message board this morning. It is titled "A wee bit of context on Susan Antilla."

Said Bagley:

The conventional wisdom has been that her husband, Dennis H Leibowitz , is with Credit Suisse First Boston. Wrong. In 2002 he left SCFB to start his own hedge fund. It's called Act 2.

Act 2 specializes in investing in the media space. Included in Act 2's portfolio is several million dollars worth of News Corp stock. You may also know News Corp as the company that owns the New York Post.

So there you have it -- a media-hedge fund conspiracy! The only problem with this smear is that Antilla and Leibowitz are divorced, a fact that is not only "conventional wisdom" but is also something that Bagley could have easily extracted from the Internet.

As usual with a Bagley smear on behalf of his employer, he takes a faux-factual nugget and fashions it into a paranoid fantasy and lie.

This latest Overstock smear not only illustrates the intimidate-and-lie tactics used by this failing company, but also again focuses attention on Bagley's chosen forum for his smears -- the Investor Village Overstock message board.

As I pointed out in a post yesterday and previously, IV allows Bagley and Byrne -- officers of a public company -- to post with impunity on the Overstock board, smearing and libeling people by name in blatant violation of IV's terms of service. Even death threats like the one in this post are allowed, when they come from Byrne supporters. Yet IV management curbs, harasses and censors critics of this company. Yesterday IV boss Ralph Kidd had the audacity to call
Sam Antar's persistent and effective questioning of Byrne "harassment," and to ban him from the board.

So now, as you can see, Byrne, Bagley and their anonymous allies can post their lies, smears and touting without much in the way of interference, since critics know they can be banned at any moment by IV's crackerjack management team.

A member of the Byrne fan club made that point clear today to one of the rare critics of the company who posts on the board: "Keep on with this frantic pace and garbage like fashion and you'll gather enough tickets to end up in the fridge."

A similar mentality has prevailed in IV's NovaStar message board, where stock touters such as Phil Saunders, the anti-shorting loon who posts as "Easter Bunny," were allowed by IV administrators to abuse and harass skeptics and tout this doggy stock.

In effect, IV has become a willing participant in the campaign by Byrne, Bagley and Overstock.com to muzzle critics and to stalk and intimidate the media. You really have to wonder why a message board operator would be so irresponsible, blatantly biased, and just plain dumb.

UPDATE: The New York Post's Roddy Boyd has a great article on how IV's NovaStar message board became a stock-pumping mechanism, propagating one-sided stock touting to untold numbers of small investors.

A good example of the service rendered by Sam's questions can be found in this post from Bagley on the Yahoo Overstock message board, after Sam was bounced from IV.

As you can see, Bagley feigned ignorance of the SEC 's investigation of Overstock.com, which has been widely publicized and which Overstock itself has disclosed in its filings. I suppose this is what the lawyers might call a "materially misleading" statement by an officer of a public company. I prefer to call it a "bald-faced lie."

These kinds of things make me wonder: What exactly does Bagley have to do before the SEC takes action? Immolate himself in front of the SEC Headquarters?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

Sam Antar Gagged Again

As I observed in a recent post, reformed scamster Sam Antar has been a thorn in the side of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and resident stalker Judd Bagley.

Antar has posted numerous polite but probing questions on the Investor Village message board, and in the process has elicited answers (and evasions) that are of real value to investigators and others probing the company.

Well, Investor Village's crackerjack management team -- which has done nothing to prevent IV from being used as a cyberstalking vehicle by Byrne and Bagley -- has restricted Sam to three posts a day. By way of comparison, IV took no such action against Bagley, even after he planted spyware in IV posts. Nor did it take action against members of the Byrne fan club who have used IV to threaten, stalk and libel Sam, myself and others.

IV has used shabby pretexts to gag Sam and another Byrne critic twice before (see this post and this one), both times in reaction to a campaign egged on by Byrne. Both times IV meekly backed down, but this time they seem to mean business.

The excuse given by IV's boss Ralph "Yellow" Kidd -- oh sorry, wrong color. Make that Ralph "Blue" Kidd -- was "clogging our forum to conduct an informal and unofficial campaign of 'deposition-style' messages targeting other members of InvestorVillage."

The "other members" were the CEO of the company and Bagley, operator of the corporate smear site and an officer of the company. The piercing and detailed character of the questions, and the unintentionally revealing answers, are what made Sam's contributions so valuable -- in contrast to the vast mishmash of noise, ravings and ad hominems that comprise IV's Overstock message board.

In effect, Kidd has turned IV into a stock-pumping mechanism for this doggy company -- something that deprives the board of any value for investors, and in fact can do real harm by misleading people seeking information on the company. As Sam observed, "They call it an Overstock.com message board. It seems more like an Overstock.com propaganda board where anyone who questions the actions of Patrick Byrne and Judd Bagley can be attacked with impunity."

To rub salt in the wound, Kidd et al don't even have the guts to talk with Sam about their turning the board into a closed-loop of tinfoil hat rants and stock-pumping. They actually had their lawyer draft the private message that was sent to Sam telling him that he was being gagged, and said Sam should speak to this lawyer if he had any questions.

Got to hand it to Kidd and the other geniuses at IV -- they sure do love paying lawyers. Too bad a lawyer is no substitute for common sense, or a conscience.

UPDATE: Later that night, IV decided to officially make its Overstock board the Patrick Byrne Fan Club, deleting a post from Sam and apparently booting Sam entirely, without explanation.

You really have to wonder why a message board would ally itself so firmly with the management of a foundering company.

Given the litigation that is likely once the Overstock/antisocialmedia dust settles, perhaps hiring the lawyer wasn't such a bad move. When Overstock meets its maker, which I suspect will be in the not-too-distant future, IV is going to have some 'splaining to do. The legal implications of message board postings, and the possible liability of service providers, is explored here.

Byrne celebrated Sam's gagging in a typically nutty post in the now dissent-rein IV: "Let us show our support to Investor Village by spreading the word about what a fair place it is, one that keeps corruption at bay." "Corruption" is, as we all know, Byrnespeak for "criticism."

The New York Post later described how IV's NovaStar message board has become a forum for unrestrained stock touting, helping untold numbers of gullible small investors lose their shirts when the stock collapsed this week.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

An Overstock Critic Silenced

Sam Antar, a reformed felon who was mastermind of the Crazy Eddie stock scam, has been performing a real public service lately. He's donated his time to shareholders of Overstock.com by directing pointed questions to Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne at the Investor Village messgae board, which Byrne regularly uses to smear critics and justify his actions.

It's been a valuable service, not just for investors but for securities regulators, who I happen to know are following the cat-and-mouse game between Antar and Byrne very closely. Overstock, after all, is a very public transgressor of corporate norms -- with much of that being played out on message boards upon which Byrne obsessively posts.

As I noted in a post that I updated yesterday, some of Byrne's admissions, in his comments, have been incredibly damaging.

That valuable dialogue has been squelched, however, by the crackerjack management team of Investor Village, which has knuckled under to pressure from Overstock loyalists by squelching Antar. IV has limited his ability to post on IV, while giving Byrne, Bagley and their sockpuppets free reign to spread their poison, and repeat the lies and smears of Overstock's antisocialmedia.net smear site. It's not clear how much, if at all, Antar will be allowed to post.

IV also censors even mild ridicule of Byrne (such as the message formerly located here, reprinted here) while allowing the most vicious cyberstalking.

None of this is a surprise, since it has happened before, with Overstock critics gagged on flimsy pretexts.

The excuse given by IV, when it silences critics, is not that they have fallen afoul of some rule, but that they have been subject of "complaints" for "clogging." In other words, the people who are hyping Overstock just don't like them. It's interesting to speculate what motive, aside from stupidity, is behind this curious way of running a public forum.

I do find it interesting that Antar was silenced within hours after Byrne expressed annoyance at his questions.

By running an ostensibly neutral message board that restricts posts by company critics, IV has turned its boards into stock-hyping forums. That creates a nice set of legal entanglements down the road for IV -- or at least, I certainly hope it does.

UPDATE: As previously, the brilliant management team of IV has been shamed into a 180 -- until the next critic draws complaints from the Byrne fan club.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.

Another Overstock Critic Silenced

Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne and loyal flack Judd Bagley are obviously feeling the heat over last week's revelation that Overstock is behind a smear site called antisocialmedia.net. They've just silenced the Internet sleuth who has tied Bagley-Byrne to antisocialmedia--a slimy relationship that could be devastating for Overstock.

The Internet sleuth in question goes by the name of "scipioafricanus," and all of this person's posts have been removed en masse, in Stalinesque fashion, from the Investor Village message board. Since IV hasn't removed the dozens of posts by Bagley (via peseudonyms), Byrne and their pals, mostly hysterical personal attacks on myself and others, it is reasonable to conclude that Byrne and/or Bagley have screamed bloody murder. It is particularly reasonable since Byrne's antisocialmedia stalker site has recently targeted message board posters, as the Post story pointed out.

This same sleuth has since shown that Bagley posted Internet messages under various IDs ("veg-o-matic" was one) showing prejudice against Jews, Mexicans and others. (I'd post links to more of his bizarre yammering, but the posts containing them were deleted by Yahoo, no doubt at Bagley's insistence). The net sleuth also traced his Internet smear campaign in 1999 and 2000 against a Florida reporter who wrote tough articles about his then-boss. Bagley has not denied the former, and responded to the latter by gloating about it.

IV's action is odd indeed for supposedly neutral message board, but apparently IV is seeking a franchise as a free-fire zone for stock touts and stalkers, undeterred by skeptics and dissenters. For example, a death threat ("you ought to be put out of your misery") against Scipio remains on Investor Village. Scip's typically civil response was erased. Ditto for attacks on me and others.

Byrne can now spew hate and lies about his critics, and generally behave like a clown, without fear of contradiction -- something that hardly benefits his shareholders, who have suffered from his inattention. The same goes for other cranks who parrot Byrne's lies, such as this idiot--who can now repeat the "Wikipedia lie" without Scipio to explain that it has been denied by Wikipedia.

Byrne is, of course, always vigorous when it comes to silencing dissent, and his desire to cover his tracks is understandable. Barron's pointed out today that Medifast CEO Bradley T. MacDonald was fired for Internet activity far more benign than Byrne's and Bagley's:

More recently, Barron's has learned, Medifast's board has become concerned about Internet postings, under the name bradmed@verizon.net, in support of Medifast on the Yahoo! Finance message board. People in a position to know say that this is a pseudonym and that MacDonald was the author of these messages.

Barron's reported that "company directors reprimanded MacDonald in mid-December after learning of a Barron's inquiry into the postings, and told him to stop posting messages, fearing, among other things, that this could violate 'fair disclosure' regulations."

That's what happens at a normal board of directors, by the way, as opposed to the collection of Byrne cronies on the Overstock board.

Barron's continued:

But even if a CEO weren't disclosing private company information, corporate governance experts say failure to identify himself as an executive of the company could be a problem. "In a worst-case scenario, it could be considered a fraud on the market if you are giving incomplete information and in my mind it is incomplete per se if you don't say where it is coming from by hiding your identity," says Nell Minow, editor and co-founder of The Corporate Library, a corporate governance group.

I wonder if a company "aiding and supporting" (to quote the Post) a vicious, lying, cyberstalking website violates Regulation FD--and a slew of other securities laws?

It obviously violates any semblance of morality and corporate ethics, but hey, this is Overstock.com!

UPDATE: Reacting to this blog item, Investor Village reinstated Scipio's posts, and IV's Ralph Kidd denied that IV had deleted the messages under pressure from Bagley and/or Byrne. (Well, sort of denied. Kidd used the words, "to my knowledge.") According to Kidd, Scipio's messages were wiped out en masse supposedly under pressure not (to his knowledge) from Bagley or Byrne but from Bagley's/Byrne's supporters, who called Scipio's posts "clogging." Without bothering to look into the matter further, but just caving in to a bunch of jugheads on a message board, IV just deleted all the posts.

It's hard to believe that any message board operator would be quite so craven and irresponsible. It is, to say the least, hard to believe, and frankly I don't (Kidd's fibs about his contacts with me not enhancing his credibility). But this does explain why IV is Patrick Byrne's favorite message board, one that he prefers to post in more than his own.

Bottom line: Scip has been forced by this ham-handed action to curtail his posts to the Overstock board. Byrne and Bagley can now lie to their heart's contend, with Scipio handcuffed. If Kidd truly is not interested in running a cyberstalker board, he will show a little backbone and allow Scipio to respond to Byrne's and Bagley's lies in the forum where they spew them.

© 2006 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

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Wall Street Versus America was published by Penguin USA on April 6.
Click here for its Amazon.com listing and here for more information on the book, from my web site.