{"id":1573,"date":"2008-06-06T12:33:08","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T17:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2011-08-15T23:22:13","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T04:22:13","slug":"securities-exchange-commission-closes-inquiry-into-overstockcom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/securities-exchange-commission-closes-inquiry-into-overstockcom\/","title":{"rendered":"Securities &#038; Exchange Commission Closes Inquiry Into Overstock.com"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK) <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/prnews\/080606\/laf022.html?.v=101\">announced today<\/a> that the Salt Lake City office of the SEC notified them that it is not recommending any enforcement action against the company.<\/p>\n<p>The following was reported:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I know that the SEC has an obligation to look into allegations it receives about any company &#8212; even when those allegations are false,&#8221; said Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com&#8217;s chairman and chief executive officer. &#8220;I believe that this inquiry was initiated, and persisted, because of false allegations made by a cohesive group of short sellers and a few financial journalists who dutifully serve them. In this case, I believe these folks fomented the SEC investigation against Overstock.com then tried to claim that the existence of an SEC investigation was evidence of wrong doing. We knew that was false.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more-->I don&#8217;t know the SEC&#8217;s threshold for an enforcement action, and I don&#8217;t know exactly what they examined relative to Overstock&#8217;s financial reporting. I am quite sure that Byrne and company will portray that as though the company is completely exonerated.<\/p>\n<p>Just as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/2008\/01\/14\/sec-drops-informal-investigation-into-usana-health-sciences\/\">in the case of Usana Health Sciences<\/a> (NASDAQ:USNA), that&#8217;s not exactly true. When the SEC decides to end an informal investigation or not take enforcement action, it doesn&#8217;t mean the company in question has done no wrong. It simply means the SEC isn&#8217;t pursuing the matter.<\/p>\n<p>Is this a good development for Overstock? Sure. A company would rather <strong>NOT<\/strong> be under investigation. Does it mean the company&#8217;s troubles are over? Of course not. It is still a horribly run company that can&#8217;t turn a profit, and one which provides misleading and inaccurate financial disclosures to Wall Street. Eventually, something&#8217;s got to give.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK) announced today that the Salt Lake City office of the SEC notified them that it is not recommending any enforcement action against the company. The following was reported: &#8220;I know that the SEC has an obligation to look [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,827],"tags":[916,915,187,1324,917],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auditing-regulations","category-public-companies","tag-o-co","tag-overstock","tag-overstockcom","tag-sec-inquiry","tag-sec-investigation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-pn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}