message board – Fraud Files Forensic Accounting Blog

Patrick Byrne & Co. Up to Dirty Message Board Tricks Again

2 March 201226 June 2008 by Tracy Coenen

I occasionally take a peek at stock message boards like the Investor Village Overstock.com board when I need a bit of entertainment. It’s especially interesting when the poster “Hannibal” makes statements about the financials and operations of Overstock.com and makes no disclosure that he is, in fact, Patrick Byrne the CEO of Overstock (NASDAQ:OSTK).

Patrick and his little friends have a history of using dirty tricks to try to gather information on the people who dare to say anything negative about Overstock. Paid cyberstalker Judd Bagley is known for secretly embedding code into messages he posts on message boards, with the intent of harvesting information about the IP addresses of those who read and respond to his messages.

Whole Foods bans executives from message boards

14 August 20117 November 2007 by Tracy Coenen

From Zac Bissonnette at BloggingStocks: After Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) CEO John Mackey bizarre antics prompted an SEC investigation and widespread media hoopla, the company’s board of directors has decided on a new policy. Top executives and directors will now be explicitly prohibited from posting on online forums about the company, its vendors, or … Read more Whole Foods bans executives from message boards

Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com CEO has surprised me

14 August 201131 July 2007 by Tracy Coenen

After all the corporate crimes I’ve seen in the last 13-or-so years, it takes a lot to surprise me. Really, it does.

But Patrick Byrne, the nutty CEO of Overstock.com has suprised me. Now, I’d like to think that my threshhold for surprise is pretty high with him. I mean, this is the guy who talks about Sith Lord conspiracies on official, recorded conference calls with Wall Street. So you pretty much have to expect stupid things out of him.

The SEC cares when CEOs post on message boards using pseudonyms????

14 August 201114 July 2007 by Tracy Coenen

Note to Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com: Read carefully please.

Note to readers: Check out Gary Weiss’s comments on this situation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an informal inquiry into the message board postings of Whole Foods Market Inc.’s CEO John Mackey. Mackey has allegedly been posting on Yahoo stock boards using a pseudonym for the last 8 years. His postings included pumping Whole Foods’ stock, praising the company’s financial results, and bashing a company Whole Foods wanted to acquire.

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