The Public Relations Genius of Patrick Byrne

Judd Bagley runs Byrne's self-degradation campaign

You might think that planting spyware in emails and Yahoo posts is "so 2007," but don't bet on it. Overstock.com's wack-a-doo CEO Patrick Byrne is "back in the game," as that obnoxious dieting commercial says.

A blogger at the Daily Kos, who had been needling Byrne in previous posts, reports tonight that he was sent a spyware-infected email that obviously came from Byrne's henchman, the ever-nauseating Judd Bagley. Bagley also sent links to crude tracking spyware planted in Yahoo message boards.

The typically nauseating details are here.

The comments are interesting, but I think this one is the best, and at this writing had been recommended by three dozen Kos readers:

My wife ain't gonna be happy...she's bought a few things from them.

No more. It might not mean much, but I'd pay double for something instead of putting another penny into that piece of shit's pocket.

Hey, you can't buy publicity like that.

UPDATE: Bagley and Byrne proudly admit their latest cyberstalking venture, and point to the latest missive on Deep Capture in which Bagley lies about everything, including my gig at Portfolio. (See update to Kos post, at the bottom. Evidently Byrne started counting my Portfolio articles and stopped at "one").

Excellent follow-up in RedState.com, entitled "Patrick Byrne, Will You Please Go Away Now!"

Here's a follow-up post describing Byrne's motives: he is, as usual, cooking the books at Overstock.

© 2009 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

What can you do on a day when the Dow falls 226 points? Well, you can weep bitter tears, drown yourself in alcohol or chocolate, or you can enjoy the latest Patrick Byrne sleaze!

Yup. It has only been a day since the most recent news from Byrne's World, and Corporate America's most wretched CEO has already outdone himself. He is truly the gift that keeps on giving. The O-Smear blog, run by a sleaze-averse techie, has the scoop in a post today.

Seems that Overstock.com's CEO has been caught with his pants down, again, and as usual he has his own big mouth to blame.

In an online post on July 12, Byrne reprinted a note he said he had sent to a New York Times reporter:

"Incidentally, it may be neither here nor there for your story, but in case you are interested, there is a Yahoo poster who uses the names “netmargin15” and “can_i_use_this_alias” who both pumps Amazon and bashes Overstock. The first is the smart sock-puppet, the second is the basher. I know:

• He or she is an Amazon employee.
• He or she is of a rank high enough to have access to Amazon’s VPN service.
• He or she displays a very high level of business knowledge, commensurate in my experience with a senior executive.

As a journalist, I cannot reveal my source for this information. But you can also ping this person through Yahoo."

Now, every time Byrne has referred to himself or his nauseating paid stalker, director of communications Judd Bagley, as "journalists," the nausea has been such that the eyes usually glaze over. So naturally most persons reading this post would not have inquired further. But O-Smear has a strong stomach, and has discovered just how Byrne got that information.

It seems almost certain that Byrne obtained information from spyware planted by Bagley.

O-Smear has all the damning details, so I'll not repeat them here. But I will repeat some questions that I have raised before:

• Does Overstock.com have a board of directors? Not a competent board, or a board with independent directors, but any kind of corporate governance whatsoever?
  
  
• What brand of sleeping pill is being used by the enforcement division of the SEC? It has got to be a whopper.
  

Chris Byron once said that the media is the "seeing eye dog" of the SEC. In this case, it is blogs like O-Smear that are doing the scut work while the SEC snoozes.

© 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.

Baghdad Byrne's Weekend Delusion-a-thon

Updated Monday, May 14

More on the continuing adventures of Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, whose paranoid fantasies and lengthy, self-incriminating message board rants are a fascinating spectacle. His increasingly surreal statements brought back fond memories of Baghdad Bob, the famously delusional Iraqi information minister.

In our last installment, I described how Byrne's "forgetting" to report an SEC subpoena for a year might have been more than just an omission, but a misstatement.

Most CEOs would hold their peace in such a situation. But Baghdad Byrne continued to dig into the topsoil with his tongue, as he continued his verbosity to investors asking a simple question: Why did he wait a year before disclosing his subpoena? It was a fascinating example of a slippery CEO refusing to tell the truth.

Byrne began the weekend mouth-fest by bouncing off the walls on the Investor Village message boards Friday night, reacting to questions from Joe Nocera, who wrote an excellent column in the New York Times Saturday morning.

If you comb through the muck you will note that Byrne's central complaint against the Times was bogus. He was given hours of time to respond to Joe's simple query about the SEC investigation of Overstock, but refused to do so -- because, no doubt, he knew his spin would not work with perceptive Nocera. This Internet addict's "didn't check my emails" excuse will go down in the pantheon of unbelievable Overstock excuses, right alongside "cow in the highway."

Completing the surreal scene was Byrne's loyal factotum, resident stalker Judd Bagley, who threatened a critic -- Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus" -- with "exposure." So I guess you can expect the Overstock's antisocialmedia.net smear site to be cranking up some fairy tales fairly soon.

Byrne and the nauseating Bagley continued to thumb their noses at Reg. FD and public company disclosure norms by posting under Internet "handles" and not disclosing their identity and corporate affiliation with each post. (Not that it would necessarily make much difference. I think that their posting on a message board raises securities law issues even if they did identify themselves properly.)

Byrne's hysterical and largely incoherent post, "Gotterdammerung of the American mainstream media," predictably tosses Nocera into the ever-widening media conspiracy. But that's not as noteworthy as his desperate effort at damage control over the delayed disclosure of the subpoena.

Byrne's latest spin (repeated the following day) is that the subpoena "was a small fraction as long as the first, covered sub-issues of the first, as well as issues related to a broader investigation that is not about me or Overstock at all."

But that's not what the company's recent 10-Q said. The 10-Q doesn't say Byrne was subpoenaed on an investigation unrelated to Overstock or Byrne. In fact, subpoenas do not disclose, as a rule, the purpose of the investigation -- they just ask for stuff. Still if Overstock knew that the purpose of the two subpoenas was different, why didn't it say so? What possible reason would it have not to say so?

As you can see, the first quarter 10-Q said that both subpoenas requested the same things:

These subpoenas [emphasis added] requested a broad range of documents, including, among other documents, all documents relating to the Company’s accounting policies, the Company’s targets, projections or estimates related to financial performance, the Company’s recent restatement of its financial statements, the filing of its complaint against Gradient Analytics, Inc., the development and implementation of certain new technology systems and disclosures of progress and problems with those systems, communications with and regarding investment analysts, communications regarding shareholders who did not receive the Company’s proxy statement in April 2006, communications with certain shareholders, and communications regarding short selling, naked short selling, purchases and sales of Company stock, obtaining paper certificates, and stock loan or borrow of Company shares.

There can be only two reasons for this discrepancy:

1. The person who signed the 10-Q, Overstock CFO David Chichester, works secretly for the Sith Lord, so he sneaked in this materially misleading language, omitted the exculpatory information to make his boss look bad, and Byrne was too busy posting on message boards and looking for dead bodies in his trunk to notice;

or

2. Byrne is telling one whopper of a fib, seeking to mislead and distort by claiming that the Overstock subpoena is materially different from the Byrne subpoena.

Once again we have the "Groucho Marx challenge": What are you going to believe, Patrick Byrne or your own two eyes?

My challenge is this: What's the SEC going to do about it?

Ace forensic accounting sleuth Tracy Coenen observes:

Did you catch that? He’s claiming that his subpoena wasn’t related to the Overstock.com SEC investigation. That will be his reason/excuse for not disclosing it in Overstock’s Prospectus and SEC filings.

Patrick Byrne may also claim that since the subpoena was to him personally, and the Prospectus and 10-K both apply to the company, then there’s no violation or lie.

The cool thing is that neither of these excuses really pans out for Byrne. The company has now disclosed the subpoena, so to say that “previously it wasn’t related to the Overstock investigation but now we’re disclosing it… ” Well, you get the idea.

The Patrick Byrne mouth-a-thon continued into Sunday, with Byrne continuing to push the "Groucho Marx challenge" in a series of ever-lengthier, ever-loonier rants. Note this pile of pretentious, dishonest mush, and this post repeating and amplifying the "Groucho Marx challenge" I noted earlier.

He also seems in intent on pushing the line that the SEC is aiming at a broad, widespread conspiracy and Byrne is just a cooperating witness. If he was, of course, they wouldn't be issuing a subpoena, and his famous "celebration" press release (below) had already indicated that the SEC's interest was largely hostile. Note the admission that "Some of the requests suggest the whispering of the blackguards, but I remain unconcerned about their hokum."



"Blackguards" is Byrnespeak for "critics who have made credible, well-documented assertions concerning me and my company." It ain't "hokum," of course, and Byrne certainly seems concerned. Indeed, terrified.

That's one of a number of contradictions and lies that oozed from Byrne's weekend ravings, which I am sure will be giving the SEC and other Overstock-watchers plenty of grist for their investigations.

Hopefully for Coenen, Sam Antar, the media, the SEC and everyone else following this story and toting up his lies and evasions, Byrne will continue to keep his tongue primed and ready for deployment. As hole-digging equipment it is a remarkable instrument.

Felon-turned-crimefighter Sam Antar observes that back on January 30 he asked Byrne on the Investor Village message board if "the Board of Directors considered any additional disclosure relating to the SEC subpoena of Overstock.com?" Byrne's response was an evasive, abusive brushoff, and Byrne's minions later had Antar booted off the board.

Meanwhile, forensic accounting whiz Tracy Coenen is dazed and amazed by Byrne's weekend obfuscations:

So now, Byrne is claiming that the May 9 press release about the company’s subpoena really included his personal subpoena, even though he didn’t actually disclose that and the subpoena hadn’t even been issued yet. That might wash with some people, but not with me.

He now disclosed the personal subpoena separately, so he must believe that it has some significance and requires disclosure. Either it needs to be disclosed or it doesn’t, but Patrick seems to be saying that it didn’t need to be disclosed separately a year ago, and this year it does. Nonsense.

But you see, Tracy, you're making the same mistake I've sometimes made. Byrne is not taken seriously, and I think that somewhere deep down he does not expect to be taken seriously. As a child of ancestral wealth, he has never had to work for a living and expects to coast for the remainder of his life on the paternal nest egg, no matter how much wreckage he causes.

Hey, they don't call him the Baghdad Bob of CEOs for nothing!

UPDATE: An alleged Overstock insider posted anonymously on the Investor Village message board Sunday night, claiming that Byrne concealed his subpoena from the board of directors and was eventually forced to act by the SEC. If not a hoax, this could be devastating. Here's Tracy Coenen's post posing two additional questions for Byrne.

The alleged insider says:

All was good in the world as the SEC careful examined the evidence provided, until the SEC pronounced that one of the CEO's targets was without fault, Gradient/Camelback Research. This infuriated the CEO and he made mention of the 2nd subpoena to one to many persons. The word leaked to the Board of Directors via a variety of sources, including Sam Antar. The CEO was called on the carpet but he basically told the board to go F themselves, he wasn't disclosing a 2nd time. One member of the board of directors then resigned.

The SEC then pushed the issue and the board was forced to act, under legal advice, to disclose the 2nd subpoena in the latest 10Q. Patrick as royally pissed off and remains pissed off to this day.

He refuses to admit anything improper was done and it is now a firing offense at Overstock.com to mention the 2nd subpoena.

But if this account is correct, why didn't the board of directors resign en masse? It doesn't seem plausible that even the most pliable corporate board would accept such misconduct from a CEO without quitting -- and the Overstock board is arguably the most pliable in Corporate America.

Another interesting weekend discovery was made by Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus." He found that a Utah entity called Provo Labs is monitoring traffic to antisocialmedia. Provo Labs, which describes itself as "an incubator that invests in early stage web companies" (whatever that means) is Bagley's former employer.

Quite a weekend for this train wreck of a company.

LATER: More babble.

© 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.

The Problem With Planting Spyware

(Updated 3/2/07)

The potentially troubling legal issues facing Overstock.com and Judd Bagley, its director of social media, are illustrated by a case that received some attention today involving MySpace.

According to a Newsday article on the subject,

Shaun Harrison, 19, of Ronkonkoma, and Saverio Mondelli, 20, of Oakdale, were given three years' probation for illegal computer access. Each had faced up to nearly 4 years in prison.

Harrison and Mondelli . . were offering a means to acquire e-mail addresses and Internet protocol addresses of users, prosecution said.

Another article adds further detail:

The popular MySpace social-networking site — where people create elaborate profiles and personalize them with photos, music and video — is supposed to offer anonymity to visitors who browse the pages.

But Harrison and Mondelli's program collected e-mail addresses and Internet Protocol addresses, prosecutors said. Such information could have been used by stalkers trying to locate MySpace users, said Deputy District Attorney Jeffrey A. McGrath.

Hmmm... does this sound familiar? As in, for instance, all the instances of spyware-planting uncovered by Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus" (see his blog here and items in my blog tagged "spyware").

And then we have this boast by Bagley on the Investor Village message board:

"The cool thing I figured out was using ActiveMeter on remote sites. Maybe its been done before (In fact, I'm sure it must have) but this iteration was developed independently by me and you have no idea the insights it has yielded."

Guess it was done before.

As recently as five days ago, Bagley pointed the finger at himself yet again, bragging about "IV traffic data gathered by those who did the gathering" -- an obvious reference to purloining IP addresses from people reading posts on InvestorVillage. That kind of data is legitimately gathered by people running websites, whether it be IV or MySpace, but not by third parties like Bagley or those two MySpace users. (IV, typically, did nothing in response to this latest outrage.)

Sure, slipping codes into message board posts to gather data on puters comes in handy when you're running a smear campaign -- you use 'em to spin fairy tales, as Bagley did for Overstock.com's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site. But there's a wee problem -- it's called the "penal code," at least in California.

Here's the press release that was issued when the two MySpace guys were arrested last year. Note in particular the reference to Sections 502(c) (1) and 502(c) (2) of the California Penal Code.

Section 502 (c) (2) says it's a crime when someone:

Knowingly accesses and without permission takes, copies, or makes use of any data from a computer, computer system, or computer network, or takes or copies any supporting documentation, whether existing or residing internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles applied that statute to a couple of guys harvesting IPs and email addresses from MySpace users. Most states have similar laws. The New York anti-hacker law is here -- note the "computer trespass" section.

Will regulators and law enforcement apply the anti-hacking statutes against Bagley? Beats me. I wonder if it beats Bagley too. I'll bet that this issue has the potential to beat him, and his employer, pretty badly.

* * *

UPDATE: Bagley reacted to the above post and others in O-Smear in typical "strategic messaging" fashion, posting a crude frameup attempt on Overstock's antisocialmedia.net corporate smear site.

Bagley or a confederate created spyware and inserted it in a post in the Investor Village Apple message board, and then Bagley claimed on antisocialmedia.net that it was from me. The O-Smear blog has a good analysis of this latest Overstock fabrication, suitably titled "O-Frame O-Lame."

The smear, which was posted at http://antisocialmedia.net/?p=74, was so far-fetched that even the tinfoil hat crowd found it hard to swallow, and it was taken down after a few hours. But I preserved it for posterity, needless to say.

This latest idiocy demonstrates the extent to which Bagley, Patrick Byrne, and their accomplices in the cyberstalking endeavor are in very deep trouble. Since Byrne usually trots out crackpot diversions before announcing bad news, to maintain unity among his "followers," it makes me wonder: could the 10-K possibly be that bad?

© 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.

Must Reading For Train Wreck Fans

A new blog is required reading for regulators or anyone following the self-destruction of Overstock.com.

It's called "O-Smear," and it was created by the Internet sleuth "ScipioAfricanus." Scipio was largely responsible for Overstock.com's "director of social media," Judd Bagley, being outed as operator of Overstock's corporate smear site antisocialmedia.net. He also has done excellent work chronicling Bagley's use of spyware to track Patrick Byrne's critics, and above all in tracking Byrne's dissembling and contradictory statements in public message boards.

Anyone probing Overstock will find this blog a comprehensive source of information on this third-rate retailer's disgraceful, unethical, and possibly illegal conduct. It is a rich source of information for anyone interested in antisocialmedia.net, its nauseating proprietor, and his "bellowing" (to quote Bloomberg) overlord.

The URL is http://o-smear.blogspot.com.

© 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.

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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.

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.

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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 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.

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.

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