It's Official: Patrick Byrne Admits Owning Smear Sites

Overstock's wack-a-doo CEO, Patrick Byrne, can always be counted on to insert his Florsheims in his mouth when given the opportunity. It happened again yesterday, when Byrne threw away all the carefully crafted corporate shells, repudiated earlier lies and admitted that he owned two astroturf websites created to attack critics, antisocialmedia.net and Deep Capture.

As previously, Byrne made these damaging admissions in an off-the-cuff posting on a stock message board, responding to my post on Friday describing how he had spat in the eye of Sarbanes-Oxley by violating the Overstock code of ethics for the umpteenth time.

Byrne helpfully corrected one error in my post--the email I described went to millions, not thousands of Overstock customers--and then proceeded to respond to other points in the article.

He denied being a conspiracy theorist, even though he pushes conspiracy theories.

He denied violating the code of ethics which was, I presume, a joke. He claimed that the prohibition on derogatory business communications, including emails (such as the one that was the subject of my article) relates only to "communicating inside our corporation," and that the same statements made publicly are just jim-dandy. The code of ethics, of course, makes no such distinction.

Byrne's next comment is a doozy. I'll quote from Byrne and a response subsequently posted in response, from one of the few non-Byrne aficionados using that board:

Byrne: "running his company into the ground"? A mischaracterization. The last quarter I checked was profitable, and we seem to be holding some pretty good cash flows for the last couple years, while much of the rest of retaildom is melting down. Things could be better, of course, but we're still chugging along better than most.

Reply: So, running your company into the ground is a "mischaracterization"? How so? I don't want to mischaracterize anything, so let's reiterate those working capital levels: end of 2004 - $ 267,640; 2005 - $79,561; 2006 - $59,475; 2007 - $62,621; 2008 - $39,679. (It's getting a little thin, isn't it? "Holding some pretty good cash flows for the last couple years" seems an odd characterization of those numbers, but I express no definite opinion.) Then there are those stockholder equity numbers: 2004 - $169,504; 2005 - $89,148; 2006 - $56,367; 2007 - $18,212; 2008 - ($2,985). All in thousands, of course, and ending with those embarrassing parentheses. It appears that Overstock has disposed of about $172.5 million in capital just in the last few years. I certainly hope that doesn't mischaracterize anything, since there's not much opinion involved in stating those numbers.

But the pièce de résistance was this slip of the tongue:

"...gleeful hopping on the get-Cramer bandwagon". A lie. Gary knows I have been at loggerheads with Cramer for years, was banned from CNBC over it. The video Jon Sewart used to destroy Cramer has been on antisocialmedia.net for a couple years, and DeepCapture.com for a year. Also, a year ago I published this lengthy critique of Jim Cramer's career ("Jim Cramer is a Complicated Man"). So by describing me now as "hopping on the get-Cramer bandwagon" Gary is lying through his teeth. [emphasis added]

Actually he disappeared from the CNBC screens in March 2006, after holding up a sign (right) promoting "thesanitycheck.com," a now-forgotten nutcase conspiracy site run by a former used medical equipment salesman named Phil Saunders.

But I stand corrected on the statement that he was "hopping on the get-Cramer bandwagon." Not true, he had done so years before via the websites he runs through proxies. How silly of me.

I can understand how Byrne might "forget" being persona no grata at CNBC after the oafish "sign" episode, but surely he had to remember his many tall tales he and his henchman Judd Bagley have told claiming that Byrne has no relationship with those websites. Byrne made that claim insistently concerning antisocialmedia, as analyzed by Sam Antar in this blog post. (For example, on Jan. 31, 2007, Byrne wrote: “Overstock and I have precisely 0 to do with AntiSocialMedia.”) And just a week ago, Bagley, "managing director" of Deep Capture, claimed that he didn't work for Byrne.

The lies, and the Florsheim-in-mouth episode, is old news from Byrne. But I'm a bit curious why Byrne bothered to go to the trouble of dredging up excuses for his flouting of Sarbanes-Oxley. Could he be concerned that the new regime at the SEC may not be as tolerant as it was under the do-nothing Christopher Cox?

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

Does Overstock.com Have a Board of Directors?

Warning: This item is not recommended for pregnant or nursing women, children under 18, persons with high blood pressure or heart disease, or anyone with a weak stomach:

Reading the latest atrocity by the nauseating (and I do mean nauseating) Judd Bagley, Overstock.com's Director of Communications, official spokesman and resident stalker, has gotten me wondering: does Overstock.com have a board of directors?

Not "does it have a competent board of directors?" or "does it have independent board members who care about their jobs?" -- the answer to those two questions obviously being no -- but whether there is such a thing as "corporate governance" at this chamber pot of a company.

What got me wondering about this was an act of blackmail, signed proudly by Bagley, directed at the proprietor of the O-Smear website, which has exposed this SEC-investigated company's unethical conduct.

You can read about the blackmail here, but I think the letter is worth replicating below:

From: Judd Bagley
To: scipioafricanus_iv@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 11:51:26 PM
Subject: just thought I'd ask...

I thought I should tell you that I've have known your real identity for a while now.

Up until last week, it appeared that you'd grown tired of o-smear and all the games (which would make "outting" you unnecessary) but lately it appears that's not the case.

I don't want to cause anybody unnecessary harm, but I'm beyond tired of the lies.

If you choose to continue as you have been, I will write about you on AntiSocialMedia.net. In doing so, my goal is not to intimidate, but to let you own your words; under those circumstances, I think the lies will take care of themselves.

Having said that, I'm also very much aware of the impact this could have on your reputation, especially where you live, and I feel obligated to offer you a way out. So, if you're ready to set things right, I'll keep your name to myself and figure we'll both be karmically better off for it.

I look forward to your response (and will be PMing this to your IV account, as well).

--
Judd Bagley

Note the dictionary definition of blackmail: "to force or coerce into a particular action, statement, etc."

This may go down in history as the first blackmail letter written in smug corporate P.R. doublespeak. ("I'm beyond tired of the lies"="I'm beyond tired of the truth." "My goal is not to intimidate"= "My goal is to intimidate you and every other critic of Overstock.com") I say that because Bagley was, of course, aware that his letter would be made public. He's proud of it, you see.

Note the similarity in wording to the threat that he made against a Wikipedia administrator in late August, shortly after going on the Overstock.com payroll in his initial title of "director of social media."

No other company in the U.S. would sanction such disgusting, unethical, and legally questionable conduct by a corporate official, made doubly odious by the fact that Bagley was hired to do the bidding of CEO Byrne, and his actions have a long history of being supported and promoted by Byrne.

Any other corporate board would discharge both Byrne and Bagley -- something obviously inconceivable for the laughingstock, lapdog, functionally nonexistent Overstock.com board.

Reading this email from a corporate thug to a private citizen also makes me wonder: Is there is such a concept as "SEC enforcement" when it comes to the misdeeds of Overstock and its CEO Patrick Byrne? Or has Byrne's ancestral wealth and political influence makes that concept moot as well?

This latest episode in the Bagley-Byrne saga is a test of Overstock.com's board of directors as well as the Enforcement Division of the SEC.

The board's independent members, I understand, have been advised of Bagley's latest actions. Ditto for the SEC.


If they do nothing in a reasonably brief period of time, then the answer to the question that I posed above will be answered. It will mean that Overstock.com, for all intents and purposes, does not have a board of directors.

As for SEC enforcement -- well, just read my book and you can understand why nothing has been done. If anything is done, I would surmise, it would only happen long after Ovestock is a wretched memory.

Also today, Sam Antar has a revealing, detailed post on how Bagley and Byrne have used anti-Semitism as a tool of corporate intimidation. It makes for fascinating reading.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: O-Smear did not respond and Bagley carried out his threat on Overstock's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site. By so doing, Bagley showed that he is as much a schmuck as he is a blackmailer.

Bagley's "revelation" is that O-Smear is run not by the Sith Lord but by some guy in Indiana -- a private citizen who is disgusted with corporate creeps like Judd Bagley.

To make the slimy picture complete, and thumb his nose at Joseph J. Tabacco Jr. and other independent directors, Bagley put a spyware bug in his ASM post, so as to track people distributing the item via email.

The onus is now on Tabacco and the other independent board members. By serving on the board of this company, they have a moral and, I suspect, legal obligation to register strong and public disapproval of the activities of Bagley and Byrne. If they don't, their silence would be tacit approval of Bagley's and Byrne's disgraceful behavior, and they will bear full responsibility for their neglect of duty.

Quite frankly, I wonder how reputable people like Tabacco could allow their reputations to be sullied by associating with a company such as Overstock.com.

Some reaction:

The Motley Fool's Daniel Rubin calls Bagley's blackmail adventures "the most incredible thing I've seen in my seven years of following the market. "

Says Rubin:

Is there ANY oversight of all this filth? Any at all? To see this mockery go on right out in the open, and involving an American public company is starting to genuinely challenge my faith in the integrity of the system. As I've said, this is the cruelest irony of this debacle. This pitiful, puke-inducing chapter of American business never ceases to turn the stomach - cyberstalking, anti-Semitism, Sith Lords, international mobsters, conspiracies, and enough message board animosity to fuel a space shuttle.

Rubin added in another Motley Fool post: "The question is when will all [Byrne's] railing and false accusations and seemingly blatant illegal activity result in his removal and legal action? This man has left a trail of animosity and denigration of the human spirit that is awe inspiring in it's scope."

That's the question. The answer is with Joe Tabacco and his colleagues.

More reaction:

• Sleazy McSleaze Now Even Sleazier (Dealbreaker)

• Is Overstock threatening its detractors? (AOL Finance BloggingStocks Blog)

• Judd Bagley is threatening people who speak out against the management and deception at Overstock.com? (Tracy Coenen's FraudFiles blog)

Digg this!

© 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, gary-weiss.com.

Boycott Overstock.com?

Prominent securities attorney Howard Sirota is calling for a boycott of Overstock.com. He's doing so in reaction to an attack on him in Overstock's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site, which attacked him (and me too, natch) in response to his concerns about anti-Semitic posts on the Yahoo board and the smear site. 

I certainly agree that this corporate chamber pot deserves a customer boycott because of the vile behavior of its CEO Patrick Byrne and his paid cyberstalker, the nauseating Judd Bagley. 

And Sirota has a point. In one December 2005 Motley Fool post, Byrne made bizarre comments on Israel and Jews that led blogger Jeff Matthews to doubt their authenticity because of what he gently described as "their apparent anti-Semitism." Any such doubts have since been laid to rest -- Byrne has acknowledgd that he is the author of this and other Motley Fool posts under the pseudonym "Hannibal100." 

Referring to odd references to Israel and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, Matthews noted:

I can think of no clear reason for making the analogy to Friedman and Israel except one: the enemies cited in the post (Herb Greenberg, David Rocker and Jim Cramer) are all Jewish.

Even for the CEO of Overstock.com, hints of a Jewish conspiracy would represent a rather disturbing twist in the ongoing saga.

The Stalwart commented that "it's not a stretch to read an anti-Semitic tone into the letter. Not only does he finger all Jews in his conspiracy, but he, out of nowhere, throws in a jab at Thomas Friedman's unevenhandedness in covering Middle-East affairs." 

However warranted Sirota's call for a boycott may be -- and I believe that it is warranted -- I would argue that a wide-ranging, nationwide boycott of this company is already underway. 

As you can see from the chart below, customers have been avoiding the Overstock.com website since the end of 2005 -- which happens to be approximately when Byrne made his company name synonymous with "nuts" in his paranoid "Sith Lord" anti-short selling crusade.

   

Notice the particularly sharp dropoff this year, which coincides with the revelation in the media that antisocialmedia.net, which had previously engaged in illegal, anonymous cyberstalking, was secretly operated by the nauseating Bagley. 

Then you have the dollars-and-cents aspect of this customer boycott of the company, as seen from this spectacularly unspectacular income statement, below.

   

Note that the number is parenthesis is getting bigger. That is no good. Got to take off the parenthesis before bigger numbers are better. 

Last but not least we have the stock price, which is less than half of what it was at the end of '05:

   

As you can see, Overstock.com is already being boycotted by customers and investors of every race, color and creed. And mind you, for the most part, they're not avoiding Overstock.com because they don't like Byrne's behavior. They're boycotting the company because there are, quite simply, better places to buy stuff. 

That's the party to Overstock's downfall that Byrne has yet to insult -- the American people. Oops, wait a second. He has. 

UPDATE: Forensic accountant Tracy Coenen observes:

What really is the purpose of making anti-semitic remarks on a message board designed to discuss the stock of a public company? My guess is intimidation.

Howard refers to Judd Bagley and his Anti-Social Media website. Judd is an “executive” at Overstock.com, and he’s a little ruffled that people like Howard and Gary Weiss and Sam Antar are exposing the shenanigans going on there. Quite simply put, something is not right at Overstock, the shareholders are suffering because it, but Judd wants everyone to shut up already.

Judd’s really a nobody. He’s the mouthpiece for Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock who is quite often referred to as “Wacky Patty” because of his delusional rantings and Sith Lord conspiracy theories.

So the executives at Overstock want to intimidate people to stop discussing all the unusual items on the financial statements, the discrepancies in the disclosures, the fact that the company waited nearly a year to write down inventory it knew was junk, and the fact that executives of the company pump the stock on a variety of message boards using pseudonyms not known to the average investor. (Rules? What rules?)

© 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, gary-weiss.com.

Judd Bagley Hears His Master's Voice

I'm practically gagging on this tiresome subject, but here we have yet another lurid story sliming its way out of the wild and wacky world of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne.

Fans of the old Lassie TV series will appreciate this: it is the story of a CEO, and the lapdog that loves him.

In a message board post yesterday afternoon, Byrne mentioned in passing that he had been asked to comment upon something by a terrific New York Post financial reporter, Roddy Boyd. Roddy, you may recall, wrote an article the other day on Byrne delaying for one year his disclosure of a subpoena.

Obviously Roddy Boyd is not on Byrne's list of favorite people. In fact, having just written an article unfavorable to Byrne, and at work on yet another, he is No. 1 on the hit parade.

And then..... look what we have here!

Later that same day, Overstock.com's stalker-in-residence, the nauseating Judd Bagley, announced a brand new post on Overstock's antisocialmedia corporate smear site, which he operates.

The subject of the smear site's latest overheated fantasies is none other than New York Post reporter Roddy Boyd!

Byrne had spoken, and his lapdog was on the case. Boyd was not one of Bagley's favorite people either, because it was his Jan. 2 article in the Post that exposed Bagley as the operator of the then-anonymous antisocialmedia smear site. That ruined Bagley's careful efforts, such as an anonymous registration, to keep the site anonymous. Bagley and Byrne constantly issued dishonest and misleading public pronouncements seeking to hide Bagley's involvement.

All this would be funny if it wasn't so creepy -- and if this did not involve a public company that is a grotesque parody of corporate ethics.

However, one thing you have to admit is that this stomach-wrenching toady has been doing an excellent job stalking and and spreading fabrications about Patrick Byrne's enemies! I just learned -- and this has not been picked up anywhere -- that Byrne has recognized Bagley for his excellent performance as his personal lapdog by promoting Bagley to the position of "director of communications."

The former "director of social media" of a company that has no social media is now "director of communications" of a company that "communicates" by rambling, unsigned posts in message boards, and by maintaining a unique astroturfing smear site.

It was never announced -- which is odd for someone moving to such a visible position -- but instead was tucked away in an Overstock conference handout here. As you can see, he was elevated to his job sometime before April 30.

Note the typical Bagley lie in the handout. He was not "speechwriter and press secretary for then-Governor of Florida Jeb Bush." He worked for a minor commissioner, Cynthia Henderson, head of the Department of Business and Professional Affairs. Bagley's major achievement there was a smear campaign against a Tampa reporter who wrote tough stories about Henderson, as reported in a previous item.

Hey, you've got to admit that Bagley has worked hard for his position. Not every company has a full-time cyberstalker, and Bagley had filled that position admirably, making him richly deserving of promotion.

Besides, with all the SEC scrutiny and all, I suppose it was time that Byrne gave Bagley actual responsibilities at the company apart from running the antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site. However, this assumes he does have responsibilities other than running the smear site. This is Overstock.com and not a normal company, after all. A normal company would not only disavow such a site, but would have fired its proprietor. This being Overstock, the stalker is encouraged and promoted.

You have to admit, not every "director of communications" has done such an excellent job of getting miserably poor media coverage, with more bad coverage coming every day! His attack on the integrity of Roddy Boyd will certainly add to his reputation as a kind of one-man corporate press-enraging mechanism.

Another nice thing about his promotion is that the SEC now has a much higher-visibility target in its investigation of Byrne's misconduct, as well as securities law and ethical lapses at Overstock in general. I understand that the company's accounting practices are a particularly serious focus of the SEC's attention.

This elevation means that from the date of his employment as "communications director," whenever that was, all of his many antisocialmedia and message board posts have -- more than ever before -- the official imprimatur of Overstock.com. He certainly was speaking for Overstock on the boards before his promotion, but this underlines the official character of his Internet activities.

It means a bunch of other things that I'll be describing in future blog posts.

So let's break out the champagne and toast an upward move for one of Corporate America's most truly loathsome characters.

Oh, and I know a perfect gift to give Bagley in recognition of his crawl up the corporate ladder: a framed copy of Overstock.com's Code of Ethics.

UPDATE: An interesting coda involving the Investor Village message board, which has become an extension of the Overstock.com cyberstalking apparatus.

After Bagley's post appeared on the Investor Village message board, a user posted two message containing personal details about Bagley and his family. Those messages were almost instantaneously deleted -- in contrast to the dozens of cyberstalking messages posted on the IV board by Bagley and others, may of which are obscene or threatening in nature. One, containing a death threat against me, is still there.

IV has also kicked off critics of Bagley and Byrne, notably felon-turned-corporate whistleblower Sam Antar, as I've previously pointed out.

© 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, gary-weiss.com.

Tracking the Deceptions of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is often viewed as a comical figure -- throwing tantrums, acting like a clown on national television (left), and spinning loony conspiracy theories to excuse his incompetence. But as New York Times columnist Joseph Nocera has eloquently pointed out, it's a mistake to view Byrne as a mere buffoon. He is also a menace, and his company is under investigation by the SEC.

An excellent blog post today by reformed felon Sam Antar points out the extent to which Byrne has put himself in jeopardy, just by opening his big mouth.

I am increasingly convinced that Byrne will be the only CEO in history to get himself in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission by posting on message boards.

Sam tracks Byrne's deceptive and contradictory remarks in the Investor Village message board, where he posts under the pseudonym "Hannibal" and only rarely signs his posts. Sam compares Byrne's slippery posts with those of Overstock.com's resident stalker Judd Bagley, who runs Overstock's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site. He concludes that Byrne and Bagley made deceptive public statements to conceal Byrne's role in creation of the antisocialmedia smear site.

That's problematic for a host of reasons, including the fact that antisocialmeda was run anonymously for some months, until Bagley was outed as its operator by the New York Post. That gives all involved -- including Overstock -- possible exposure under the federal anticyberstalking law, a risk factor nowhere disclosed in the company's SEC filings.

As if to again demonstrate Overstock's contempt for the most elementary corporate ethics, Bagley spun a wild conspiracy theory on the antisocialmedia smear site yesterday, encompassing the Depository Trust and Clearing Corp., myself and a person named Joseph Petrofsky.

As the O-Smear blog points out, such fairy tales seek to mislead investors by accusing Overstock's real and imagined critics of being in league with DTCC, which is at the center of "stock counterfeiting" conspiracy theories.

So how does a potential investor evaluate the true state of Overstock.com? Largely by the representations of management. Is it materially significant if Overstock is being criticized as the result of some covert DTCC operation (implying critics are dishonest) or the criticism is honest?

I think it is "materially significant...and the SEC knows that I think it's materially significant...and they know where to find me.

And me as well.

Ironic, isn't it, the kind of trouble Patrick Byrne is getting himself into, just to placate a small number of "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theorists -- many of whom don't even own the stock?

UPDATE: Not only is Byrne's bloviating exposing himself to legal liability, but it is being used as ammunition by his opponents in his recent absurd junk lawsuit against Wall Street firms.

In legal papers filed recently seeking dismissal of the suit, lawyers for one of the defendants, Merrill Lynch, observed that the suit is part of a "continuing campaign by Overstock and its CEO to blame the poor performance of its stock on anything other than its own inadequacies." The brief prominently sites Overstock's "public relations assault against critics."

Later in the day, Bagley placed a misleading disclaimer on the smear site -- obviously at the behest of Overstock's lawyers -- in a desperate, belated attempt to put some daylight between his corporate smear site and Overstock.

Imagine the derision that would rightly come from Byrne and his supporters, if an employee from Rocker Partners started an anonymous smear site aimed at Byrne. Yet Byrne, in his arrogance, expects people to swallow this pap.

A good analysis of the doubletalk, which contradicts (as usual) previous statements by Byrne, can be found here.

© 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, gary-weiss.com.

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.

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.

The Joys of 'Muzzling' Overstock's Critics

Responding to questions posed yesterday by Sam Antar, Overstock.com's resident stalker Judd Bagley has favored us all with a job description of his position as "director of social media." It is required reading for anyone following the increasingly bizarre Overstock saga.

As you can see, Bagley has been tasked with harassing, "muzzling" and "emasculating" critics of his boss Patrick Byrne, stalking them and planting spyware. (So as to make Byrne's critics "think twice before opening any email or following any link.")

I'm not kidding. He not only said all this, he boasted about it.

Bagley also took a stab at damage control -- to rationalize the fact that he is a walking P.R. disaster and legal liability -- by claiming that he has been trying all along to actually reduce negative attention directed at Byrne.

Obviously, if Bagley had wanted to throw himself under a bus for his boss, he would have openly run Overstock.com's antisocialmedia.net smear site rather than cowering behind an elaborate system of phony IDs .

If that was indeed his strategy, it has been a miserable failure. Far from diverting attention from Byrne, he has done a very good job of attracting negative publicity for Overstock and his boss. There have been three negative press articles so far -- all trashing Byrne, Overstock and Bagley -- in addition to the blog spanking he is getting from myself and others ("Sleazey McSleaze.")

None of those articles would have appeared, and many of the items in this and other blogs would never have seen the light of day, were it not for Judd Bagley's good work.

What's his next spin, I wonder?

UPDATE: The following day. Byrne engaged in a desperate effort to create "deniability" and shield Overstock from liability for its corporate smear site. In the process, as usual, he just dug the ditch deeper -- admitting that Bagley has not been doing the "social networking job" for which he was supposedly hired.

The story now is that Bagley was "reassigned" the day he started work.

How about that! He's locked himself into quite a fish story, as Internet sleuth ScipioAfricanus points out.

The doubletalk ("I don't read what Sam Antar wrote, but here is a reply") is classic Byrne. Ditto for the loony ranting and paranoia, though this "tools of Satan" and "dead man's switch" stuff is over the top even by Byrne standards. He is clearly a frightened man -- and justifiably so.

P.S. Bagley has said he is trying to divert attention from Byrne. Do the above paragraphs meet that goal?

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

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.

Some Questions For Judd Bagley

Sam Antar, reformed felon and mastermind of the Crazy Eddie stock scam, has dedicated his life to repenting for his past thievery and rooting out wrongdoing. He has taken up the cause of the corporate train wreck called "Overstock.com," and has directed some perceptive questions at Overstock.com's resident stalker Judd Bagley.

The questions can be found here.

Sam left out one question that intrigues me. Bagley was hired as "director of social media" in August. That's six months ago. Apart from creating a smear website to push the personal vendettas of Patrick Byrne, what else has he done as "director of social media"? Or is that his sole job responsibility? (Apart, that is, from dreaming up fantasies for Overstock.com's antisocialmedia.net smear site.)

Bagley, who ordinarily waxes rhapsodic on the Investor Village message boards on the weekends, responded to Sam's questions by hiding under his bed.

These are, of course, just a sample of the questions that Bagley will have to address sooner or later. Ditto for Byrne, who has been talking out of both sides of his mouth on his relationship with Bagley.

UPDATE: Byrne, interesting enough, offered up slippery responses and his usual "chewbacca" to the questions posed to his subordinate, sliming his way past the most important ones -- such as the identities of the numerous "handles" Bagley has used on the Internet.

That's not a trivial issue since some possible Bagley handles have made "forward-looking" statements about the company. Not surprised that Byrne has advised "investigative journalist" Bagley not to touch that one with a ten-foot pole.

Note that the questions were posed to Bagley, not Byrne. Yet here he is, the CEO of the company, coming on a stock message board to respond to questions about the "hobby" of his subordinate. Some "hobby." I've known top-level corporate initiatives that have drawn less enthusiastic cheerleading from the CEO than Bagley's smear campaign.

If there was any doubt about Overstock's sponsorship of, and involvement with, Bagley's activities, Byrne just laid it to rest.

I'd still like to see Bagley crawl out from under his bed and respond to Sam's questions. I'm also still anxious to hear about all the good "social media work" -- apart from the smear site, cyberstalking, spyware-planting and so on -- that Bagley has been carrying out for his boss over the past six months.

Note Sam's response. Another valid point.

The Overstock sliminess just keeps going on and on and on. It will stop someday, no doubt about it, and it won't be pretty for Overstock's shareholders.

© 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.

Times Article on Overstalk

The New York Times today has a very good article on the Overstock.com cyberstalking campaign.

None of this is really new. Almost a year ago, Joseph Nocera of the New York Times wrote a damning column on Overstock's "campaign of menace." It described the methods Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne uses -- including anonymous proxies on the Internet -- to silence critical journalists and analysts. The latest tool in Byrne's arsenal of lies is Overstock.com's antisocialmedia.net smear site.

After detailing Byrne's stock market conspiracy theories, which he described as "loony beyond belief," Nocera commented:

I've gone from viewing [Overstock CEO] Byrne as an amusing diversion to a menace, at least for anyone who cares about the First Amendment. What has become increasingly clear in the months since the Sith Lord speech is that Mr. Byrne is using the courts, the Internet, his taunting e-mails — and even his conspiracy theory — as part of a thinly disguised effort to squelch any and all criticism of Overstock. . . .

This is what Mr. Bryne does: along with [anonymous blogger "Bob O'Brien"], he bullies and taunts and goads the small handful of reporters who dare to write about Overstock, making it clear that there will be a price to be paid for tackling the company or its chief executive. And as a result, financial reporters have become very chary of taking him on.

That column was written months before Byrne hired a professional smear artist, a former GOP goon who has boasted about smearing a reporter in Florida, to publish lies about me and other critics of Ovestock.

Overstock.com's witch hunt against its real and imaginary enemies has gone from bad to despicable to, well . . . read this article on the new federal cyberstalking law. Bagley is sensitive to the implications of the law, as indicated in the update below.

Just one addendum to the article: the Wikipedia smear was denied not just by me, but by Wikipedia too. The rest of Bagley's smears have been systematically shredded by Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus." See this post, (as well as this one and this and this and. . . many others). Scipio, who apparently is a software engineer, also deserves credit for outing Bagley as operator of Overstock's antisocialmedia,net corporate smear site.

Also, the Times didn't mention Bagley's admitted use of spyware to track down critics of his boss, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. Blog items on that can be found here. All those items link mainly to Scipio's good detective work in uncovering invisible software "bugs," such as the one described here.

I see that yet another techie has begun to probe Bagley's methods. This is a good example of how citizen activists can counteract corporate Internet abusers like Bagley.

UPDATE: Reacting to the Times story, Bagley redesigned the antisocialmedia corporate smear site, added language confirming that he owned the blog, tossed in some spin and as usual, some new lies.

Bagley's aim was to belatedly turn a corporate cyberstalking site into something resembling "journalism." His obvious purpose was to avoid liability under the federal cyberstalking law, which prohibits anonymous harassment on the Internet. Before Bagley was exposed as its operator, antisocialmedia took great pains to conceal its ownership, including use of a "DomainsByProxy" registration. (See it here, before he changes it.).

But this effort to put lipstick on a pig is not going to work.

This corporate hatchet man's latest lie is that he gave me "multiple opportunities" to respond to his latest fantasies. (He doesn't even pretend to have contacted me before his previous smears.)

In fact, Bagley posted a comment in my blog less than one hour before he set forth his latest fantasies, and I was later forwarded an email he sent to another blogger called "Mediacrity" that he surmises, incorrectly, is me.

Obviously Bagley is apprehensive that he will be held accountable for running this anonymous corporate harassment and dirty tricks operation. He has every reason to be. Spin and lie and conceal as he may, I think Bagley will learn that toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

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.

Bagley Spied on His Friends

Sorry, folks. I know this blog is gagging on the nauseating spectacle of the hideous Judd Bagley, Overstock.com's "social media" (i.e., cyberstalking) director. I really don't want to write so much about this pompous nonenity, but it seems that every new day brings something dreadful.

Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus," who first dug out Bagley's obsessive and slimy use of spyware, described today how Bagley snooped not on "enemies" of his boss Patrick Byrne but on his pals at a friendly website.

Bagley has been posting on a message board called "Wikipedia Review," which is highly critical of Wikipedia. Posing as a critic of Wikipedia, Bagley received a friendly reception as he pushed the "stock counterfeiting" cause and boasted about harassing unpopular Wiki administrators.

In early September, just as he was getting all comfy in his job as Byrne's "director of social media" (i.e., as operator of Overstock.com antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site) Bagley inserted spyware in a Wiki Review web posting. The spyware "bug" snooped on people clicking on the posts, and linked to a Bagley-related enterprise.

The details are in Scipio's posts here and here.

Meanwhile, Bagley continued to dig the shovel in deeper overnight, with posts such as this one, in which he boasted about hacking into Yahoo's message board system.

Bagley also started hounding, threatening, stalking, and sending spyware to a user critical of him at the Investor Village message board. ("Got what I need," bragged the refreshingly conscience-free corporate henchman.) IV's operators, not the brightest bulbs in the pack, acted quickly-- by revoking the victim's messaging privileges.

It's not only getting worse and worse, it is getting sicker and sicker, and increasingly off the charts from a legal perspective. (It moved way off the "unethical" meter long ago.) And I'm sorry to say that there will be more Tales of Judd to tell in coming days and week. They're nauseating, I know. But keep repeating to yourself "this is an officer of a public company, acting with the blessing of his CEO," and it will keep the bile down. For a while at least.

Oh, when I say there will be more Tales of Judd -- that's not speculation.

UPDATE: Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus" later found that a suspiciously Bagleyesque denizen of Wikipedia Review was traceable back to Bagley's business partner, Provo Labs. Read about it here.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

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.

A Firing Offense

Overstock.com CEO/conspiracy theorist/short-and-analyst suer/journalist-taunter/Worst CEO-wannabe and stalking aficionado Patrick Byrne told Donny Deutsch on CNBC last night that it is a firing offense at his fast-sinking company to mention the stock price.

Gee, I wonder why that is? Can anyone take a guess?

Byrne seemed subdued and pro forma in his tired recitation of "stock market IOU" and "the sky is falling" nonsense. I wonder if even he believes any of that garbage anymore.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

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 CEO Expounds on the Joys of Cyberstalking

Over the long weekend, while normal people relaxed, Overstock.com stalker-in-residence Judd Bagley and his out-of-control boss Patrick Byrne dug themselves deeper into the cyberstalking scandal that they have created for themselves and their shareholders.

Bagley boasted about spying on Internet critics (also see this post and this one), and Byrne yanked closely the umbilical chord that binds him with Bagley's stalking-and-lying site, antisocialmedia.net. Here Bagley pretty much confesses to have sent a spyware-infected private message to Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus." Nice work, Judd!

More on Bagley's links to spyware-infected Internet messaging can be found in this neat bit of sleuthing. It is now increasingly obvious that the planting of invisible spyware codes in message board posts, which I described a few days ago, was carried out by Bagley.

Byrne's revelations came in two waves. First came his "cyberstalking is citizen journalism and journalists are evil corporations" rant on Jan. 13. When that was found to contain a real whopper of a contradiction, Byrne came back with a post on Jan. 14.

Blabbermouth that he is, Byrne did a nice job of confirming that Bagley's job is to run antisocialmedia:

Does Judd Bagley primarily work from Overstock.com facilities? STRANGE GUY, KEEPS HIS OWN HOURS, COMES IN SOME NIGHTS, STAYS AWAY FOR DAYS.

I would love to be a fly on the wall at the deposition sessions that I am sure are in his future. More evidence that Overstock.com's antisocialmedia.net smear site is Bagley's full-time job can be found here.

Byrne then ducked and weaved and contradicted what he had said in the past. The Aug. 8 reference is particularly damning, as "ipfrelee" was an Internet handle Bagley cringed behind earlier in the year. So, what have we here? Byrne spoke to Bagley about his cyberstalking on Aug. 8, hired the same cyberstalker to be a vice president a few days later, and (to quote what he said on Dec. 23) didn't "technically" know who ran antisocialmedia!

(Aside to the SEC: As Byrne would say, "Is this bad?")

Byrne also promised to send email spams to Overstock's hapless customers about an upcoming TV sound bite.

The same Internet sleuth who did all the great work linked above, "ScipioAfricanus," has found disturbing evidence tying Bagley's spyware-planting to Provo Labs of Utah, whose CEO Paul Allen is widely known in the Utah biz community. Provo Labs bought Bagley's "Big Idea" PR firm early in 2006.

In his Jan. 14 IV post, Byrne went out of his way to say that he has never even heard of Provo Labs! I'm convinced. Aren't you? Provo Labs has absolutely, positively nothing to do with Bagley's corporate-blessed critic-stalking, even though one of the spyware-infected message board postings linked directly to a Provo Labs blog.

Last but not least, Bagley posted a message on my blog (not published, of course, but preserved for posterity), reciting lies that he was imminently posting about my wife and then saying: "I again invite you to open a dialog that will allow us to settle our differences. This is getting pretty silly, I trust you'll agree. Judd."

In other words, "shut the f--- up, Weiss, or we'll post more lies about you and we won't stop at you. We'll go after your family."

I'd say Bagley has been watching The Godfather one too many times.

Note the resemblance to an anonymous threat that I posted about a few months ago, as well as an extortionate post by Bagley on a Yahoo message board in December. The message has been nuked by Yahoo, which has no tolerance for cyberstalking, but was replicated here:

"But the fact remains: his bad behavior needs to stop, and at some point, fire must be fought with fire...So, prior to the publication of Part Two on 12/20, we again ask Gary Weiss to engage us in a meaningful dialog. Please contact me at: antisocialmedia@gmail.com"

"Bad behavior" meaning, of course, criticism of Bagley's employer, Patrick Byrne.

It just keep going on and on and on and on..... Every time they open their big mouths, they blurt out something incriminating. Watching Byrne and Bagley dig themselves in deeper is like the fat lady at the carnival: it would almost be amusing if it wasn't so ugly.

Food for thought: this is a hobby blog, one that I write for my own amusement and as a diversion from real work. As you can see, it has driven Byrne over the edge. How is he going to react when the real investigators get on his case? And here's still more to consider.

UPDATE: Later in the day, Bagley made an appearance in the comments section of Dealbreaker.com, and brought his big mouth with him:

Gary's blog is now about me, leaving Bob O'Brien and Patrick Byrne to skip along undistracted. Hell, I'll take one or two for the team, and keep on feeding them the same rope they'll soon find themselves even more profoundly tangled up in. [emphasis added]

In other words, all the stuff about antisocialmedia being separate and apart from Overstock is what it appears to be, which is total bull. Bagley acted in concert with others, Patrick Byrne and Phil Saunders a/k/a "Bob O'Brien," in pursuit of his criminal cyberstalking and harassment enterprise.

Correction: In an early version of this item I inaccurately referred to Bagley as a "vice president" of Overstock.com. He is not. I apologize to all the people holding the title "vice president" in corporate America

© 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.

Judd Bagley Fesses Up

UPDATE: Judd Bagley copped a plea to eight felony forgeries in April 2013. See "Closing the File on a Criminal and Junkie Named Judd Bagley," March 30, 2015, describing his arrest and conviction for repeatedly forging a doctor's name on prescriptions.

Overstock.com's director of social media Judd Bagley, motivated by Lord knows what, admitted last night that he runs the anonymous cyberstalking site antisocialmedia.net.

Wow. That was faster than I expected. The Internet sleuths who smoked out this nightcrawler and professional liar should be congratulated.

Only one question arises in my mind: What laws were broken? Not "were laws broken?" but "what were the laws that were broken?" The new federal cyberstalking law comes to mind, obviously, but what others? Regulation FD is another good possibility, given the ASM Lie Machine was created after Bagley became a corporate officer. (And speaking of corporate disclosure, shouldn't Overstock file an 8-K disclosing its involvement in ASM?)

Bagley is trying hard to distance himself from his employer, Patrick Byrne, who brought him on as "director of social media" in August with all the fanfare that you and I would use in buying a can of Raid cockroach spray. Nice try, but too late. Byrne himself promoted the site and contributed to it, and has indicated that he has advance knowledge of its disclosures. Once again, Byrne's big mouth has landed him in deep doo-doo.

Putting a name behind a smear won't help when it comes to that cyberstalking law, which bans anonymous stalking on the Internet. Not now. Too late for that too. The toothpaste is out of the tube.

Even retracting his lies, and admitting that they've been refuted (such as his oft-repeated Wikipedia lie, which was denied by Wiki founder Jimbo Wales), would be a nice gesture but won't get him off the hook. Again, too late.

Further lies, such as saying that I and others are "criminals" as he did last night, just make the noose tighter. Cybersleuths are already ripping last night's lies to shreds. The time for lies is over. Bagley's admission that he is ASM, after months of cringing behind pseudonyms and anonymous registrations like the coward that he is, is only a first step.

Remember also that there is a lot more than ASM involved here. There is a pattern of intimidation, threats, harassment, invasion of privacy and, as revealed yesterday, implanting of spyware in message board posts. Click here for my posts on this increasingly bizarre corporate chicanery.

As you can see, Bagley is in trouble, and he is not the only one by a long shot. Byrne, and others I am sure, need to be held accountable for their actions. My advice is that Bagley go to the authorities, now, and try something new for a change: tell the truth. This is not a time for spin. The authorities won't expect anything less. He owes that to his wife and kids.

And down the road, if he ever wants to tell the story of the most clumsily executed corporate smear campaign since General Motors stalked Ralph Nader, I'll be happy to talk to him.

Meanwhile, I am reminded of a line from those old British crime movies: "Officer, do your duty."

Dealbreaker's headline sums up the rather self-evident character of the recent tidings: "Sleazey McSleaze Admits To Sleaziness."

But Bagley is just a side issue. Here is a question that is worth pondering:

Byrne said the following on the Investor Village Overstock message board on Dec. 23:

I am not behind antisocialmedia.com, offer it no support, it has nothing to do with overstock. Technically, I do not "know" who out there is behind it (the person who is behind it has made an effort to shield me from that knowledge), though admittedly, I have a very good idea.

Of course, we now know that at the time he said that, his "vice president for social media" was running ASM. As Byrne would put it, is that bad? Or as I would put it, is that a material misrepresentation under the securities laws?

I don't know the answer. But that's a good question, I would think.

UPDATE: Two subsequent developments confirm my thesis that Bagley and Byrne are in deep, deep trouble -- much greater trouble than they may know.

The first is a post at Investors Village from Patrick Byrne that embraces Bagley's antisocialmedia, showing it to be the corporate smear machine that it is. Along the way, Byrne dissembles (as usual) about the circumstances of ASM's creation.

The next is the usual anonymous Judd Bagley fairy tale and collection of lies, hinging on a "letter to the State Department" that somebody supposedly wrote on behalf of my wife to obtain residency in this country. Lurid, but, as usual from Sleazey McSleaze, a lie. Her permanent status application was based on marriage, not employment, and no such letter was ever requested or necessary.

Now, there was indeed a very serious immigration scandal, involving the wife of another correspondent. This has received widespread publicity, and apparently was twisted by Bagley to conform with Byrne's obsessions.

After the ASM's latest lies went online, Bagley appeared on the IV board in a series of bizarre posts, including this one in which he merrily gloated about mastering bigger and better spyware and invasion of privacy techniques. (His pals and sockpuppets did him one better, with the latest of series of death threats directed at me -- here's its former location. IV deleted it, but, as usual, took no action against the creep who posted it.)

Oh well. This is Overstock, after all, a company whose CEO is a habitual liar, and who employs lies and lying liars/stalkers like McSleaze as an essential part of his business plan.

In Byrne's world, anonymous stalkers are "citizen journalists" and his abysmal performance as CEO is replaced by a fantasy land, in which his many critics are the bad guys who have, I suppose, sucked the life out of his company. Them, not him. What a sad, sick world in which he lives.

© 2007 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

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.

More Fallout From Overstalk

The Patrick Byrne-Judd Bagley circus is becoming more grotesque by the minute. It now seems that pals of Overstock.com's clownish CEO have been planting spyware in posts in the Investor Village Overstock message board, to snoop on people who wander by just to read IV posts.

This is not speculation -- it's a cold, hard fact that becomes obvious if you closely examine a whole bunch of IV posts.

Seems that cyberstalkers planted invisible "web bug tracking images" in IV messages that transmit back the IP addresses of people reading the posts. They can then presumably be transmitted back to Bagley's antisocialmedia.net smear website, for whatever use will satisfy Byrne's craving for lies about his critics. This can happen on IV because its software allows customers to put images in their posts, which can be abused by cyberstalkers to hide spyware.

Read all about it in posts here, here and here.

The third "here" describes how the software "bugs" track back to outside parties, three of which are traceable directly to Bagley, based on the use of the same code as Bagley's blog. This post describes how another would-be spyware-planter revealed a link to yet another Bagley-related outfit. (The links in the post were swiftly deleted after appearance of this item -- see update.)

All this spyware was planted after Bagley became Overstock's "director of social media," but before it was revealed that he runs the "antisocialmedia" cyberstalking site.

This is top notch computer forensic detective work. But read these posts fast, just in case IV's harebrained management listens to Bagley/Byrne or their pals and nukes the posts for "clogging" or some other shabby pretext.

The legality of such software "bugs" is questionable at best. Investor Village, no doubt anxious to repair the damage to its reputation -- after knuckling under to pressure by removing posts critical of Byrne -- will certainly act quickly to put an end to this activity, and kick out cyberstalkers who abuse its site.

Or at least I hope so. If past is precedent, the cyberstalking will continue to be tolerated by one of the most irresponsible message board proprietors I have ever stumbled upon.

But dealing with a few message board cockroaches is the easy stuff. More difficult is what this says about Overstock's nonexistent corporate ethics and laughable board oversight, and how Overstock's beleaguered shareholders have yet one other ticking time bomb to worry about.

UPDATE: The spyware-infected IV posts linked in this post mentioned earlier were deleted by IV's crackerjack management shortly after this item appeared. However, they are available (here, for instance) from Google Cache for viewing by those of us lacking subpoena power.

By the way, if IV really wants to implement a zero-tolerance policy toward cyberstalking, the idea is to nip it in the bud, not to delete embarrassing evidence.

(A few weeks later, it was discovered that Bagley had been planting spyware in posts on the Silicon Investor messge boards. See an analysis posted here.)

© 2006 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

-----------

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.

-----------

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.